Organization Background

As a producing organization, CAP21 began in 1994 and continues to provide programming for new works for production at CAP21 or to move on and be produced at venues in New York and around the country. Each season, three new works are produced for a two-week “work in progress” run. In addition CAP21 works in development with twenty new musicals and plays providing public and in-house readings. CAP21’s season features diverse offerings of new and classic plays and musicals for a multi-generational audience of more than 3,800 people from the greater New York metropolitan area.  Nearly 200 theatre artists are engaged each year to create and present new and classic work.

The CAP21 Conservatory provides an in-depth actor training program specializing in musical theatre performance. The school, which began in 1994, is now an internationally recognized musical theatre conservatory. Currently, through its various programs, the Conservatory annually trains over 400 emerging performers who come from all over the United States and internationally.

Founder’s Philosophy
Frank Ventura, Executive Artistic Director

The artist collaboration is at the core of what CAP21 does. The CAP21 process of training and development integrates three crucial components of the theater artist: the Instrument, the Craftsman and the Collaborator. The support and development of the creative instrument – the body and voice for an actor; the imagination, the stimulation of an idea for a writer – is the ground work. Training the craftsman develops the artist and the storyteller. The collaborator is the third and most crucial component – the ability to work together with other actors, directors, writers in order to create an ensemble to tell a theatrical musical story. Classical forms of Acting, Dance, Music and Literature are the base from which the foundation of technique is built for the actor in musical theater.

CAP21’s unique institutional structure, as both a training ground for new actors and a developmental professional company, provides a home that is full of resources so that artists can work, play, experiment, grow, dream and take risks. Not only do we provide well-equipped rehearsal and performance space, but our world renowned conservatory faculty and the CAP21 artistic community offer a built-in roster of professional dramaturges, dialect coaches, movement specialists, acting coaches, musicians and more. So under one roof, we have every collaborator needed to develop one’s craft.

As a director and choreographer who has been working in New York City for nearly 30 years, I understand the challenges that artists here face in creating workable supportive collaborations. I know the components of a safe, workable, creative environment and I work daily to provide that and empower artists with encouragement and respect for their creative vision.

Outreach and Special Events

CAP21 has been conducting arts-in-education programs since 1994. Frank Ventura helped initiate Camp Broadway, a theatre arts education company dedicated to helping students and families experience theatre in creative and meaningful ways which now serves young people nationwide. Since 2000, CAP21 has been participating in the D.A.R.E. Dance Program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). The program was founded in 1999 to offer upper elementary and middle school children the opportunity to learn dance after school, for free, as a positive alternative to drugs and gang involvement. The curriculum emphasizes D.A.R.E. themes such as building self-esteem, teamwork, resisting negative peer pressure and focusing on positive health goals and attitudes. The program includes dance presentations by professionals, after school workshops for voluntary participants, and student performances in a school and/or community setting CAP21 reaches up to 8,000 inner-city youth in New York City and New Jersey each year through its association with DARE Dance.

Over the years, CAP21 has also produced the entertainment portion of special events for nationally recognized organizations such as Save the Children, Loews Corporation and Golden Books.