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Shubert Summer Camp Builds A Training Ground For Teaching Artists

Lucy Gellman | August 7th, 2024

Shubert Summer Camp Builds A Training Ground For Teaching Artists

Culture & Community  |  Downtown  |  Education & Youth  |  Summer camp  |  Arts & Culture  |  Theater  |  Shubert Theatre

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Top: Alanna Cajigas, Maya Martinez, and Jordan Velez. Bottom: Students in the 4/5 (4th and 5th grade) age group. Lucy Gellman Photos.

In an auditorium just off College Street, Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore. She looked around, pigtails bouncing as she turned her head from side to side. On stage, a pint-sized Cowardly Lion raised her paws, as if she was about to offer a furry, timid hug. The Tin Man began to cry, vigorously rubbing her eyes. In the audience,  Alanna Cajigas held up her hands, in the universal gesture of you got this!

“It’s okay to get a little mixed up!” she said, stepping closer to the same stage that gave her a start in theater. “It’s okay if we miss our lines. It’s a-ok!”

A rising senior at Western Connecticut State University, Cajigas is one of the teachers at the Shubert Theatre’s 13th annual summer camp, run out of Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School every July. In back-to-back two-week sessions, young artists flex their skills as actors, choreographers, lighting and sound designers, and film and video instructors, often all before graduating high school and college.     

In the process, it has become a unique and unexpected pipeline for early-career arts educators, from newly minted high school grads to just-certified teachers who are still getting the hang of the classroom. As they head into that work, many of them can’t imagine taking that step—or having a sense of educational family—without it.

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Sumiah Gay (at top) in rehearsal for James and the Giant Peach.

“This is all about my love for theater,” said Sumiah Gay, a New Haven Public Schools grad and veteran theater teacher in the program who just earned her certification, and will be teaching drama at Dunbar Elementary School in Bridgeport in the fall. “I love interacting with the kids. I love what I can do here.”

That approach starts in the camp’s earliest days, when it was just a fledgling idea among a few arts educators working on a shoestring budget. In 2012, Shubert Director of Education and Engagement Kelly Wuzzardo launched the program as a way for students to get a feel for Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School (Co-Op). At the time, she worked with educator Kjerstin Pugh, then the director of Co-Op’s after school program.

Back then, Co-Op had only been on College Street for three years, and was still feeling out its then-nascent relationship with the Shubert. As the camp grew, Co-Op students kept coming back, often teaching in the program even after they’d graduated. Since, it has grown to include partners from tech theater teacher Janie “Ms. A” Alexander to New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, which came onboard this year. For many of the teachers, it’s also a first job: the camp formed a partnership with the city's Youth @ Work program in 2015 that still exists today.

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Top: 4/5 Students in a compressed Wizard of Oz. Bottom: Finding Nemo cast members Kalista Lopez-Ortiz, Laila Beth Cavallaro, Alice Sil, and Laila Sana Rafia. "I just feel like I get to express myself," Laila Beth said. 

Wuzzardo also folded in lessons in social and emotional wellness, from “care cards” that students can earn by doing small acts of kindness for each other to “quiet lunch” and quiet snack time, for students who are overwhelmed by the rush and bustle of the cafeteria. Those have remained a trademark of the camp: at the end of every session, there is a raffle where students can enter their care cards and win prizes.

“It’s always hectic,” she said of the camp with a smile, tiny Uno cards dangling from her ears. “But it’s always good, too.”

As students prepared for a final showcase on a recent Thursday, that approach came to life across the building, a fine and performing arts high school that goes eerily quiet after graduation in June, then springs back to life with the camp in July.

In the auditorium, fourth and fifth grade students were traveling to the far-away land of Oz, jumping from Kansas to the Wicked Witch of the West to Dorothy’s safe return home in a whirlwind version of the play. Onstage, a moving, brightly-patterned knot of flowers had surrounded Dorothy, and was now speaking, their tinny voices raised to the rafters.

“Run away or you’ll never go home!” one flower warned her. Offstage, a Cowardly Lion, paws out, and Tin Man in a ruffled silver blouse waited to make their entrance. Dorothy leaned in, as if she was surveilling the garden, and then stepped back. Behind her, the black curtains rippled with movement: someone was coming. She watched with bated breath.ShubertSummer24 - 5

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Cajigas walks students through bows. 

In the audience, teaching assistant Jordan Velez was watching too, waiting to see what was coming next. When the Lion entered with the Tin Man and Scarecrow in tow (a nod to Alexander, who helps with costume design and is wonderfully inventive ), she nodded as if to confirm that everything was still on track. Then she smiled, as if to say Go on!

For the teachers, it’s about keeping that consistent balance of learning and fun. Cajigas, who found the job through Alexander, called it a way to get back to the basics after a stressful year of acting at WestConn. At the camp, she’s in charge of both directing and teaching a young generation of theater kids, a task she’s grown to love. For a month, she's taught between three and four dozen students a day.  

“It’s crazy to think that we could be the ones to give a kid their start,” she said. “You always think about, as an actor, who gave you your start? And I would love to be one of those people. I would love to say, 'That was my student! I started that! She was there on my stage!'

In 90-minute teaching blocks, she often returns to exercises she once did as a student at Co-Op, from warmups to spirited games of “Simon Says” that yield huge, infectious bouts of laughter. In the process, she said, students are  teaching her too. The camp has been a master class in directing and in patience. 

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Upstairs, rehearsals for James and the Giant Peach and Finding Nemo were in full swing. Above are counselors Giyana Lafontant and Amarra Jacobs. "I've seen a lot of kids grow," Jacobs said. 

That’s also true for Velez, a third year teaching assistant in drama who is studying elementary education at the University of Connecticut (UConn). At 7, Velez fell in love with the idea of working with kids professionally, an interest that she never outgrew.  "I know, emotionally, it's very, very straining," she said. "It's definitely a lot, which is why you have to love it to do it, or else you're not going to want to or last a long time." 

After graduating from Co-Op in 2023, she came back to the camp this year—and discovered that it was helpful in giving her extra  experience outside of the college classroom. There’s no set arts pedagogy here: she and Cajigas just go by feel, learning when and how to trust themselves and when to ask for help.

“Their minds are so amazing and incredible, and they're so smart,” she said of the campers. “No matter how young or how old they are, all their individual personalities are so adorable. I see myself in them so much sometimes.”

“That’s the best part, honestly,” Cajigas chimed back in. “Seeing the kids perform, giving them their start, introducing them to theater. I think theater, professionally,  can be very harsh, and it can be really hard to keep a positive mindset when it comes to that.”

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Maya Martinez, a tech theater teaching assistant and rising junior at Co-Op, added that there’s a kind of magic to the summer camp that doesn’t specifically exist during the school year. A transplant from the Bronx and more recently  West Haven, Martinez didn’t do tech theater until arriving at Co-Op. Originally, she didn’t love it either: she was just trying out something new. Then she became an assistant at the camp.

“I came and turned on the lights, and all the kids went, ‘Oooooh! Can you make it purple?!’” she remembered with a smile. Now she awes them daily with her technical prowess, stopping a track mid-song or turning the lights off for an impromptu black out in which the cast has to improvise.

"These kids, it's like, coming here and they're actually looking up to me,” she said. “There's more energy to them. They're more excited than the older kids, because this is all they do. at this camp, the kids live and breathe theater and art. They're here cause they wanna be here."

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Leah Lovell and Elijah Mcrae.

That excitement carried over to students across the building, from young visual artists to cast members putting the final touches on Finding Nemo (“it’s really more like losing Nemo if you think about it,” one quipped before disappearing into the cafeteria for a snack before this reporter could get their name).

As she evened out her painting of Kermit the Frog in the black box theater turned art gallery, 12-year-old Leah Lovell said the camp has helped her learn new artistic techniques and also given her a space to de-stress through making. She returned to Kermit, a favorite character of hers, because he and fellow Muppets remind her of the importance of being silly when the world feels upside down.

“It’s a really good experience,” she said of the camp. She praised educator Judie Cavanaugh, a veteran art teacher in the program, for giving her a space to create that felt safe and inviting , especially in her first year at the camp.

Nearby, 13-year-old Elijah Mcrae held up a tiny sculpture of a cupcake, a swirl of frosting resting like a crown on its clay top. Like Leah, he called his art a kind of outlet, savoring the summer because he doesn’t get other chances to create work outside of school. He’s currently studying at Achievement First Amistad Academy Middle School in New Haven.

“I just think about art,” he said. “It’s a stress reliever. You get away from things you don’t like.”

At the camp, “I’m making friends,” he added. “ Everybody’s pretty much cool."

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Williams: "My favorite part is getting to see younger people express themselves."

In part, that’s because they have teaching interns like Fallon Williams, a rising junior at Co-Op who is taking the summer to learn from pros like Cavanaugh. A strings student at Co-Op during the year, Williams learned about the camp through fellow students, and was excited to jump onboard, she said. Like Martinez in several of her peers, she is funded through Youth @ Work.

“Honestly, my favorite part is getting to see younger people express themselves,” she said as she molded a glob of purple putty into a rough sphere. ”it’s nice to see what’s on their mind. It kind of makes me feel like I’m a camper here myself.”

Upstairs, meanwhile, teaching assistant Aiden Meyer was walking campers through video editing, channeling his younger self as a gaggle of fourth graders clambered around him, kneeling on chairs and buzzing from one computer to another nearby.

Seven years ago, his mom dropped him off at the camp as a wide-eyed fifth grader unsure of what to expect. It quickly became a fixture of his summers. Now that he’s looking ahead toward college—he’s a rising junior at Guilford High School—he sees his younger self in the campers. Those include his sister, 8-year-old Colby Meyer—or as she’s known on stage, the Tin Man.   

“It’s almost like, a group or a family that I get to see every summer,” he said. “I’m excited at the end of every school year. I think it’s really special because it’s such a unique opportunity. It really pushes the kids to be really creative.”

“It’s a little crazy in there?” he said to a student who interrupted him mid-thought. He stood to investigate. “Oh, all right.”

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Colby and Aiden Meyer.

Down the hall, Sumiah Gay had stepped into the crazy with spirit fingers, working on the last few run throughs of James and the Giant Peach. In between numbers, she recalled her own journey from Co-Op student to a teacher at the camp, where she’s worked for over half a decade.

This year, she balanced summer work with the final stages of Connecticut teacher certification. In less than a month, she’ll step into her own theater classroom for the first time. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else beforehand.

“You get a new family for a few weeks,” she said.