The Livingston Film Series is delighted to present a screening of mockumentary Theater Camp on Thursday, April 11th. The film begins at 7pm at the Shane Lalani Center for the Arts.
This loving chronicle of the on and offstage shenanigans at a summer drama camp in the Adirondacks is the movie equivalent of a yarn-and-popsicle-stick weaving your kid brought home from crafts class. Theater Camp was co-directed and co-written by one of its stars, The Bear’s Molly Gordon, based in part on remembrances of her own childhood friendship with co-star Ben Platt. The pair’s longtime friend Nick Lieberman co-wrote and co-directed with Gordon, while Platt’s now-fiancé Noah Galvin plays the key role of an overworked production manager.
All those crisscrossing real-life connections somehow result not in one of those too-many-cooks comedies that feel like a collection of sketches, but in a cohesive and warmhearted 93-minute tribute to arts pedagogy (think School of Rock, but with Sondheim) and to the self-serious drama teen who lives within us all. Yes, the mockumentary-style framing device is overfamiliar and distracting, but it falls away after the first few scenes, and the camp’s big end-of-summer production Joan, Still – a deranged original musical with at least two songs I still burst into at random six months later – achieves the rare trick of creating a fictional work-within-the-work that is supposed to be really good, and actually is. Written by Dana Stevens, the film is Rated PG-13 with a runtime of 94 min.
Continuing its latest season of screening independent features, documentaries, local films and vintage classics, doors open at 6:30pm with screenings to follow at 7pm. Admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted. Concessions available. For more information, please visit www.theshanecenter.org.
The Livingston Film Series is generously sponsored by Marilyn Clotz & Mary Ann Bearden and Donald B. Gimbel. •
