West Side Story

Members of the tech crew pose for a photo on set during intermission at the Cornelia Connelly Center’s production of West Side Story

For the second year running, Broadway for Arts Education partnered with the Cornelia Connelly Center on a two-week theater tech and production camp, where high school students learned how a show actually gets built behind the scenes.

Students moved through every part of the process, from sound and lighting design and engineering to stage management, fundraising and budgeting, set design, and overall production planning. Every skill fed into one real goal: producing West Side Story for their peers and classmates.

Students ran cues, managed scene transitions, and were the ones who had to figure out what to do when something went sideways mid-show. Students ran rehearsals with barely any adult intervention. They made the calls themselves, and lived with the results.

By opening night, the students had designed the show, built out its physical world, and were the ones actually running it. It wasn't flawless. Some cues were late, some transitions clunky. But it was theirs, start to finish, and that's what truly mattered.

None of this happens without the donors who funded our FY26 Hamilton Workshop. Their support paid for this camp directly, and gave these students a shot at something most teenagers never get close to: real ownership of their show, and chance to suppor their community using their new-found offstage skills.

Take a look at some production stills and behind-the-scenes photos, shot by Josh Silk, below.