Being a theatre kid is no easy walk in the park. Executing the triple-threat abilities of acting, singing and dancing is what makes a star, at least in the world of Theater Camp.
Initially a short film and now a fully-fledged feature, Nick Lieberman’s feature debut chronicles the young talent that parades through theatre camps in America. The mockumentary begins when camp founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris), falls into a coma and the fate of the upstate New York summer camp rests on her wannabe influencer son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro).
Under his instruction, camp legends and codependent besties, music teacher Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon) and drama teacher Amos (Ben Platt), embark on writing, composing and directing an original musical all about Joan: Joan, Still.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Theater Camp is a love letter to theatre kids made by a quartet of theatre lovers. Lieberman wrote and directed the film with Gordon, who co-stars and shares writing and performance credits with Platt and Noah Galvin.
Here, Lieberman discusses the genesis of Theatre Camp, his love of documentaries, and how child actors excel at improvisation.
Theatre Camp began as a short film, was there anything you achieved in the feature that you were unable to in the short?
There were things we learned from the short that we directly wanted to try and reproduce. Chief among them: that kids are such brilliant improvisers and putting them in situations where they understand the stakes of the situation, they just respond so imaginatively and inventively.
In terms of new things, the musical in the movie is a huge part of our conception of the structure of the film, certainly going into the film, and the casting. Putting a musical on film was something we’d always dreamed of doing as a group.
Once we’d landed on the youth theatre world being something the four of us really wanted to explore and lovingly satirise, one of the first things we wanted to tackle was a musical.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Did you create the full Joan, Still musical for the film?
The soundtrack has longer versions of each of the numbers. We wrote all those songs as full numbers with many more verses and dance breaks but it couldn’t all end up in the movie.
There was no book for Joan, Still. I don’t know quite how all of those songs would’ve hung together into a coherent two-act musical. We are interested in that in the future, we do love Joan, Still.
READ MORE: Director Josh Greenbaum on Strays: ‘No genre should be limited by any one style’
When it comes to telling the story of Theater Camp, what drew you to the mockumentary format?
Molly and I are big fans of vérité documentaries. The War Room, about Clinton’s ‘92 campaign, and [Original Cast Album: Company] the documentary about the recording of the Company cast album, have this quality that blends tones.
The most serious human rawness is right next to utter absurdity. Getting people into the pressure cooker for three weeks to put on a musical with kids would be inherently ridiculous. With all the improv, we were going to end up shooting it like a documentary.
You mention improvisation, how was creating an environment on set that gave these children actors freedom but also delivered the purpose of the scene?
Film sets are very stressful environments but the way we were shooting, it had none of the normal repetition of doing the same thing over and over again.
Instead, there was this urgency, even from the crew who wanted to hear what the next bit would be. It was like having a live focus group. If I saw the sound guy walking away laughing, I knew it was a good joke. More often than not, especially when we’d find the scene, we’d yell ‘Cut!’ and erupt in laughter.
Bringing that audience feeling to the set, inviting everyone in as authors and enjoyers of the material, and enabling everyone to be a participant went a long way in giving actors the live show feeling.
READ MORE: Maestro trailer | Bradley Cooper stars in first look at Bernstein biopic
There’s a quartet of you at the heart of Theatre Camp: yourself, Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, and Noah Galvin. You’re friends turned creative collaborators, how did your position behind the camera take shape?
It’s funny to say friends turned creative collaborators, all of our friendships were formed doing theatre together.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
The first time I got to know Ben was doing Into the Woods. In high school, Molly and Noah met doing a musical Alice by Heart. Ben and Noah, who are now engaged, met on the web series Molly, I and Noah were making so, in a way, the collaborations came before the friendships.
Part of what this film’s about is those bonds forged in the fire of making something together, it says a lot about why we’re so close after two decades of friendship.
To my personal journey, though I was doing theatre as a kid, I knew very early on I was interested in being a filmmaker.
I love editing, it’s a huge part of how I thought about directing and conceiving this movie. I have a background in documentary editing and we gave ourselves permission to be loose on set knowing we could clear up the mess in [post-production]. My passion has always trended towards watching a lot of films and reading a lot of criticism.
That editing process and the cutthroat “kill your darlings” must have been a challenge in this case, when you’re playing with so much material. How was the process of building Theatre Camp in post-production?
Molly and I are very harsh critics of our work, we were very determined to go back and re-cut it, it could be funnier, it could be tighter. It’s such a discipline and iterative, you cut stuff but then zoom out and think: ‘Does this scene even need to be in the movie?’
You get into that rhythm where you’re building something piece by piece. I think it is a combination of killing your darlings and being really attuned to the film you’re watching.
It helps to have someone to share [the editing] with. Molly and I would watch the film silently, take 200 notes each and 180 would be the exact same. It was like ‘We’re obviously right if we’re both thinking this scene sucks.’
I think if I was alone, or she was alone, we’d question ourselves more. Even after Sundance [Film Festival, the film’s premiere] we saw some things we wanted to keep tweaking.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Theater Camp is a love letter to theatre kids. How did you go about finding these brilliant young actors?
One hundred percent we owe everything in that domain to our wonderful casting directors Kristian Charbonier and Bernard Telsey. Bernie is a New York legend and has such a beat on true theatre kids. All the kids in the film are committed performing theatre kids and that authenticity is a huge reason why, from day one, they were bringing the energy.
We had written the kids’ characters and had a sense of the types but also there was a level of abstraction that allowed for when a kid came in and we were like ‘This person has to be in the movie.’
They were able to mould who the character was and they were embodying themselves at theatre camp. Bailey Bonnet, in particular, is so wonderful as young Joan. The second she came into an audition we were like ‘We don’t know what character this girl is playing but she has to be in the movie.’
Theater Camp is in UK cinemas 25 August.
