2024 Treehouse Summer Musical Theatre Program

Since 2008, Yellow Tree Theatre has offered an exciting, robust, multi-disciplined musical theatre summer camp: the Treehouse. Yellow Tree Theatre’s summer Treehouse was designed to address the specific need in the Osseo/Brooklyn Center/Brooklyn Park/Maple Grove communities for accessible, quality summer theatre arts training for youth.

The Treehouse is a fun 4-week musical theatre intensive serving between 20–40 youth, ages 10–17 from the Osseo/Maple Grove/Brooklyn Center/Brooklyn Park/Twin Cities communities. We welcome students at all levels and offer educational experiences at introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels.

Each day of the program, our students receive classes taught by award-winning theatre professionals in Music, Movement and Dance, Acting Improvisation, Play and Creative Writing, and Technical Production, culminating in an original musical production which the students devise and perform themselves. Our diverse body of students brainstorm and decide on the burning topics they are eager to tackle and address. The carefully crafted curriculum of every class emphasizes how various disciplines of musical theatre work in tandem to support the story they create.

Our program will take place July 8–August 2, 2024, at Yellow Tree Theatre in Osseo, MN. Historically, Yellow Tree has partnered with North Hennepin Community College, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School, and local Girl Scout troupes. This year, Yellow Tree is in conversation to partner with Walker-West Music Academy to bolster our music element with top-notch music education, technology, and equipment and to expand the outreach to students who may not have access to excellent musical theatre education.

Each class is designed to introduce and sharpen our student’s knowledge of essential musical theater disciplines.

• Music Element: vocal health & wellness,
breathing techniques and theory, lyric-writing, music theory, composition, and sound design and technology. Taught by Jamecia Bennett (Grammy and Ivey award winner) and Jeffrey Lowe Bailey (Professor of Practice at Walker-West Music Academy).
• Movement/Dance Element: warm-up technique, physical acumen, physical storytelling, physical interpretation, and music integration. Taught by Austene Van (Ivey award winner and Executive Artistic Director of Yellow Tree).
• Acting/Improvisation Element: acting techniques, character development, projection, enunciation, interpretation of song and text, memorization, bolstering stage presence, confidence-building, problem-solving, and team/ensemble work. Taught by Charles Fraser (award winning actor and playwright).
• Play/Creative Writing Element: critical and creative thinking, ideation-to-page techniques, free writing, poetry, storytelling,  and script and lyric writing. Taught by Laura Esping (award winning playwright and actor).
• Technical Production Element: lighting, sound, scenic, prop, and costume design. Perfect for students who may be insecure about performing. Taught by Justin Hooper (director and Technical Production Coordinator of Yellow Tree).

According to 2014 box office data, 64% of our audience came from Osseo/Maple Grove, 13% came from the Champlin/Brooklyn Park area, and 15% from other northwestern suburbs and 8% from Minneapolis/St. Paul. Our staff, board, and patrons have expressed a strong desire for Yellow Tree Theatre to expand its engagement. Since then, we have increased the diversity of our student body and have enjoyed more representation from our surrounding communities and neighborhoods.

Due to the lingering financial effects of the pandemic, Yellow Tree Theatre was not able to offer the Treehouse camp in the summer of 2023—the first time since 2008. With your support, Yellow Tree can return to offer our students an excellent musical theatre education, arm them with lifelong tools to help expand their imagination, connect them with peers of all backgrounds, increase their confidence, and amplify their voices to positively affect their lives and communities...and maybe change the world.