Musical Theatre at Girls’ Jewish Summer Camps

Abstract

Abstract In the summer musicals take place in the tiny, insular, homogenous culture of girls’ non-Orthodox Jewish summer camps in Maine. Each of these summer camps was founded by Jewish women—all early twentieth-century progressive educators—for socioeconomically privileged Jewish girls. Since the early 1900s, girls who attend the summer camps have participated in theatre as a required activity alongside swimming, volleyball, and arts and crafts, so musical theatre shapes their experiences in profound ways. This chapter visits four of these summer camps in the same state where Stephen Sondheim spent many summers at Androscoggin, an all-boys’ Jewish summer camp. Over the course of their years at camp, most girls perform in seven musicals and see forty more. In this consciously created community, the excitement, pressure, and camaraderie of musical theatre production creates an even more intense bubble in its midst.