About Crystal Theatre Publishing

Founded in 1987 by Cheryl and Alexandrea Kemeny, Mariner Pezza and David Jackins, Crystal Theatre began as a workshop for 50 students.  We have since grown to a theatre school which serves 250 students per semester with 17 productions per year, 4 different summer camps, a public access TV show, an opera company and now – our own publishing company.  Our mission is to train students in the techniques of theatre through the presentation of original musicals.  Since our inception, we have premiered more than 25 new musicals and operas.

We are now making these large-cast musicals available for production to other youth theatre groups and schools.  Those of us involved in youth theatre have the opposite problem of Broadway shows – we want lots of good parts.  None of our students want to be wallpaper!  Furthermore, the reality of performance is that the more people onstage, the more people will be in your audience.  Crystal Theatre has been successful through the years because we place the learning of our students above “the play”.  Of course, students do not progress by being in horrible shows or by performing parts they are incapable of.  It’s the teacher’s job to gage a student’s readiness.  At Crystal Theatre we multiple cast all major parts to give the most opportunity.  This increases rehearsal time, but we believe students become better actors by observing the rehearsal of others.

            Crystal Theatre is currently in the process of recording all our shows using students to sing all roles.  These CD’s become invaluable memorization tools so students can rehearse music at home.  We also have instrumental versions for rehearsal or performance purposes so directors are not limited by not having an accompanist for rehearsals.  We do the majority of our productions in 12 two-hour rehearsals and 1 dress rehearsal and we’ve still managed to garner 2 Moss Hart Honorable Mentions and 1 Youth Division winner for our 1996 production of “Ellis Island”!  It can be done.