Friday, July 24, 2009
Onstage / Arts Harand Camp at 55
Posted by Albert Williams on 07.24.09 at 02:32 PM
Harand Camp of the Theatre Arts is celebrating its 55th season of teaching youngsters about musical theater in a summer-camp context.
Founded in 1955 by actress-sisters Sulie and Pearl Harand and their husbands, the camp today is run by Sulie—the only surviving founder—and her daughter and nieces. Harand has groomed generations of aspiring show-biz professionals. Noted alumni—campers and staff—include Jeremy Piven (whose parents,Byrne and Joyce, once taught drama at the camp), Billy Zane, film director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), playwrights David Rush and Jeffrey Sweet, Todd London of the Tony-winning New Dramatists theater in New York, composer Errol Pearlman, and Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg, who taught and sent her kids there. I attended the camp in the mid-1960s and found it to be an intense, creative, life-changing experience. My loving congratulations to the Harand family.
T.J. Shanoff—coauthor of Second City Theatricals' Rod Blagojevich Superstar—returned to the camp for its annual pageant. Here's his account.
Comments (2)
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You forgot to add Billy Campbell[just on Meteor and Virginia Madsen [best supporting acress winner] and Rusty Schwimmer who have all made the big time out in Hollywood,and all 3 at the camp as well.
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dislikeThere are a LOT of people I didn't name. Actors, writers, designers, producers; also doctors, teachers, and even politicians (Sen. Russ Feingold). Go to the Reader archives and the Harand Camp website for more names.
One person I did actually FORGET to mention was Lyric Opera lighting designer Duane Schuler, one of the opera world's top lighting designers, who got his start making stage lights out of coffee cans at Harand in the 1960s.
