It started as a magical summer camp romance. “I was in a big musical, and I fell madly in love with the leading man,” says Claudia, a theater director and drama professor, who was 12 at the time. “So madly in love, in fact, that I lent him my incredibly awesome 1960s motorcycle jacket to wear in the play.
“Not only did I never get it back,” she says, “but I saw his boyfriend wearing it later in the session.”
Just another day in the life at Stagedoor Manor, the Catskills theater camp that’s been a kiddie microcosm of Broadway since 1975.
In “Theater Geek,” out next week, author Mickey Rapkin chronicles the camp, which for $5,000 gives young thespians a three-week induction into the so-called “Stagedoor Mafia.”
Stagedoor, which has already been the subject of two movies — 2003’s “Camp” and a 2006 self-titled documentary — is a gold mine of budding talent, tucked away in the upstate town of Loch Sheldrake.
In 1995, camper Natalie Portman played Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” during which one of the dancers fell. “A video survives,” Rapkin writes. “Natalie registers the commotion but never breaks character…When you’re a teenage actress starring as a Nazi-era stripper, what choice do you have but to keep on singing?”
And “Scrubs” star Zach Braff, a camper for many years, worked with Jack Romano, the volatile former artistic director. “After catching Braff in a Stagedoor production of ‘Once Upon a Mattress,’ Jack delivered this crushing critique,” Rapkin writes, “shouting at Zach and his co-star: ‘Did you two have a lobotomy?’
‘I had to look up the word lobotomy,’ Zach says. ‘But I knew it was bad.’ ”
Drama boot camp it may be, but Stagedoor is also a beacon for agents. “Jon Cryer left camp to do ‘Brighton Beach’ on Broadway,” comedian Seth Herzog tells Rapkin. “And then he did ‘No Small Affair,’ the Demi Moore movie. He went from being the guy in my bunk to being a film star.”
Given its many famous alums — Lea Michele, Robert Downey Jr., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mandy Moore — what’s surprising is that Stagedoor doesn’t audition its students. Registration is strictly first-come, first-served. (Returning campers are guaranteed a spot.)
But its proximity to New York means a high volume of celebrity offspring. Steven Tyler dropped off his daughter, Mia, in a stretch limo. Richard Dreyfuss once requested, and was denied, permission to deliver his kids via helicopter.
Boldface names get no special treatment, though. When Frances Bean, Courtney Love’s daughter, attended, her rock-star mom showed up for the final weekend of performances (only parents, close friends and a select few agents may attend).
“I heard my camp director say to somebody, ‘Can you show Franny’s mom where her room is?’ That made me so happy,” says Cindy Samuelson, who’s run the camp since 2004. “She wasn’t Courtney Love, she was just Franny’s mom. No matter who the celebrity is, here they’re just so-and-so’s mom or dad.”