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Kids learn theater at The Smith Center’s Camp Broadway — VIDEO

Gotta sing, gotta dance.

But first, gotta learn how. And The Smith Center’s Camp Broadway is the place.

At least for the hundred kids, ages 10 to 17, stretched out on the floor of the complex’s Troesh Studio Theater.

Decked out in white Camp Broadway T-shirts emblazoned with the motto “Develop Your Character,” the campers play a specialized form of “Simon Says” as leader Louise Lemos and fellow instructors quiz them on stage geography, asking them to point — literally — upstage, downstage, stage left and stage right.

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Camp attendees Cora Bella Kligel, left, and Simone Saxe, right, go over music during Camp Broadway at the Smith Center. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

It’s the start of an introductory session in which campers warm up their bodies, then their voices.

“Nice and easy — you’re just waking up those muscles,” Lemos tells the campers. “Feet together — feel your body grow tall.”

Shifting from stretches to actual dance steps, Lemos encourages the campers to keep moving, calling for “a nice little march,” but “not heavy feet. Please make it look like a march without sounding like a march.”

As for those who have never danced before, she offers a simple reassurance: “If this is brand new to you, don’t worry.”

After all, they’ve got a whole week to figure it out.

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Camp attendees participate in a warm up during Camp Broadway at the Smith Center. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

By Friday, these Mainstage campers will be ready to strut their stuff, delivering multiple numbers from “Shrek: The Musical” on the Reynolds Hall stage. (The week before, their younger counterparts in the Shining Stars program, ages 6 to 9, performed selections from “Peter Pan.”)

Following vocal warm-ups, they begin rehearsing a medley of Broadway-centric songs, from “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “On Broadway” to “Broadway Rhythm,” “Broadway Baby” and “Lullaby of Broadway.”

Guiding their singing, Robby Wingfield — whose “day job” involves playing keyboards, saxophone and clarinet for “Baz — Star Crossed Love” at the Palazzo — offers the campers some words of wisdom.

“Every repetition we do,” he comments, “you need to be asking yourself, how can I make it better?”

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Camp attendees sing “Give My Regards To Broadway” during their day at Camp Broadway. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

If that sounds a bit intense for a weeklong summer camp session, it’s also what brings participants to Camp Broadway.

“I learn something new every year,” says 15-year-old Estee Harbor, a Las Vegas Academy student who’s back for her fifth summer at Camp Broadway. “You get so much done. We’re constantly working.”

Benjamin Barnes, a 12-year-old student at Henderson’s Brown Academy of International Studies, has attended other theater-oriented camps, but “this is more in-depth,” he notes. Starting his fourth Camp Broadway summer, “I like coming and making friends here,” he adds.

It’s the sixth summer for The Smith Center’s Camp Broadway sessions; the program was founded in 1995 in New York City and has since expanded to other cities, including Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh and Phoenix.

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Camp attendees Cora Bella Kligel, left, and Simone Saxe, right, gather their things to break off into smaller groups during Camp Broadway. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

Unlike some summer theater programs, participants don’t audition to attend, notes Smith Center president Myron Martin, whose daughter Molly attended Camp Broadway in New York, before The Smith Center opened in 2012.

Some campers have “raw talent” and others have “experience in the theater,” while still others participate because “it’s something fun to do over the summer,” Martin explains. “It isn’t about grooming the next crop of stars on Broadway.”

Rather than focusing on “who’s the best,” Camp Broadway focuses on “putting on a great show — everyone works together,” according to Candy Schneider, The Smith Center’s education and outreach vice president.

The fact that the show (presented Friday, the last day of the weeklong session) takes place at Reynolds Hall means campers sign the theater’s backstage wall, alongside panels inscribed by touring Broadway casts and other visiting performers.

“There is such a need in this community for experiences like this,” Schneider comments, noting that the sessions have “sold out every time.” (The half-day Shining Stars sessions cost $450 per camper; the all-day Mainstage program, which includes lunch, is $695.)

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Camp attendees page through music during Camp Broadway. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

This year’s camp includes 10 staff members — two from New York, eight from Las Vegas.

“We have the depth of talent to pull from” local theater professionals, “as they do in New York,” Schneider comments. “We want to support those artists.”

Lemos, whose credits include “Mamma Mia!” on the Strip, has been with Camp Broadway since it began at The Smith Center — and explains that the staffers are “here to make it less scary” and “less intimidating” for the young performers.

“It’s really about creating an atmosphere for theater-loving kids,” she adds. “I’m not saying they have to be proficient; they just have to love it.”

Yet “each year, I’m amazed at how great the performances are,” Martin admits. (To say nothing of the scenery and costumes the campers whip up in 4½ days.)

As the campers’ introductory warm-up winds down, Lemos and the other staffers guide the campers through a more complex series of moves.

“Give it a try,” she encourages them. “Be brave.”

From Camp Broadway to Broadway

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Camp attendee Vincent Guiliano sings “Give My Regards To Broadway” with the rest of the attendees during the start of the day at Camp Broadway. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

Christopher Convery misses Camp Broadway at The Smith Center.

“I really, really miss Camp Broadway,” he admits. “If I could go back, I would.”

But the 9-year-old has somewhere else to be six nights a week: Broadway’s Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where he plays young Charlie Price in the Tony-winning musical “Kinky Boots.”

Convery’s been in the role for more than a year — and he’s convinced that he wouldn’t have gotten the role without attending Camp Broadway first.

So is Convery’s mother, Vanessa, a former Cirque du Soleil performer (in New York-New York’s “Zumanity”) who calls Camp Broadway “truly the catalyst into this career” during a telephone interview from New York. “I don’t think he would have felt prepared.”

Christopher was “5 or 6” when his mother spotted a newspaper advertisement for Camp Broadway, a weeklong theater program for kids.

“He was singing around the house a lot,” so she signed him up, Vanessa recalls.

The campers performed “The Jungle Book” and Christopher played “an animal — a leopard, I think,” he says. “All I know was I loved it,” in part because “I got to make a lot of new friends who like to do what I do.”

From there, Christopher auditioned for, and won, a role in a Super Summer Theatre production of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” And when a friend told Vanessa about a “Kinky Boots” audition, she and Christopher took a red-eye flight to New York to be there.

They planned to stay a day — until Christopher got a callback and “they measured me.” “Kinky Boots” officials later called to tell him he’d won the role of young Charlie.

“We were so happy,” Christopher says. “So we moved.” (“We” being Christopher, his mother and his 4-year-old brother.)

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Camp attendees Vincent Guiliano, left, and Lillian Gillette, right, sing at Camp Broadway. Bridget Bennett Las Vegas Review-Journal

In addition to “Kinky Boots,” Christopher has done guest roles on TV shows from NBC’s “Blacklist: Redemption” to YouTube star Miranda Sings’ Netflix series “Haters Back Off” (which films in Vancouver, which meant more red-eye flights on his days off).

Christopher’s not the only Las Vegan in “Kinky Boots’ ” Broadway cast these days; Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie is now playing the grown-up Charlie Price.

“Oh, my God, he’s from Las Vegas too, which is crazy,” Christopher says. And after the show ends, “every night the crowd” waiting at the stage door: “They literally scream like crazy.”

In addition to his public school classes, Christopher has a scholarship to study dance at the New York City Ballet’s School of American Ballet.

“I want to do acting until I die,” he says. “Seriously, it’s just amazing.”

Contact Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.

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