Salina Art Center Cinema
The Salina Art Center Cinema is excited to announce "Theatre Camp" will show at the Salina Art Center Aug. 11-16.
You don’t have to be a theater kid to enjoy this very funny, knowing, heartfelt mockumentary co-directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman. The premise: an unseen film crew goes behind the scenes at a beloved summer theater camp in upstate New York called “AdirondACTS.” When camp director Joan (Amy Sedaris) is sidelined by a strobe-light-induced coma, a plucky gang of misfits get together to save AdirondACTS from financial ruin. Naturally, they’re going to put on a show: a moving tribute called “Joan, Still” that two of the camp’s favorite teachers, Amos (Ben Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Gordon), plan to produce—before they’ve actually written a script. Packed with likeable young thespians completely convincing as Broadway and movie stars-in-the-making, Theater Camp is both a send-up of documentary tropes and a genuine celebration of that unrivalled enthusiasm, crowd-pleasing energy, and demented optimism that makes stage performers unique as artists. Think Waiting for Guffman, but with characters who are legitimately talented and memorable; except maybe for Joan’s son Troy (Jimmy Tatro), a hapless vlogger-entrepreneur who steps in to (mis)handle the business side of the camp and doesn’t immediately jive with all the colorful personalities of the young people who live for the theater. Troy warms up, but viewers will enjoy the backstage details and the “Murphy’s Law” nature of theatrical production. Gordon, Lieberman, Platt, & co. obviously know and love the quirks of the theater world: the euphoric highs, the embarrassing lows; the ego and the obsession; the half-camaraderie, half-competitiveness that sparks all those unforgettable moments on stage. It’s this honest affection that makes Theater Camp so fun, so endearing, and so relatable, even to non-theater people.