The Haddonfield-based Cross Keys Theatre Collective will send several unpaid interns to the upcoming Philly Pride Arts Festival to learn the tools of the theater trade.
The five production interns – two from Temple University and three from various high schools – will set up and run the 10 festival shows featured during June’s Pride Month.
Stephen Dagrosa, artistic director at the collective, is pleased the interns will be in a professional setting.
“I’m excited that the interns can get to work with multiple professional companies and get a taste of that professional world …” he noted. “We wanted to give other opportunities for those that don’t want to be on stage, but want to learn more about theater, the other aspects of theater.”
Interns will work on performances that include “Fear & Self-Loathing in Philadelphia,” “Love Notes Special Edition: Memoirs of a Gaysian” and a concert at Philly’s city hall.
Dagrosa believes the shows will expose interns to prime learning environments.
“There are going to be different kinds of aspects of how it is to do sound and do lighting for different-size groups,” he explained. “Different-size locations and things like that. So you have to change obviously because it’s different music, different locations, different people that they’re working with.
“So (interns will) learn how to adapt, which is really, I think, important for them to learn.”
Dagrosa, who teaches at Camden County Technical School, said the Cross Keys Theatre Collective began in 2024, when a summer program he worked on was canceled. Fourteen students associated with it then had nowhere to go, so he and Jessica Thomas created the collective.
In the organization’s first year, Dagrosa created a showcase where students who had practiced for four weeks performed songs from shows such as “Beetlejuice” and “The Wiz” at the Haddon Fortnightly. Last year, 30 students between seventh and 12th grade performed “Sister Act” as a musical; this year, they will do the same with “Shrek.”
Thomas, the collective’s general director, recalled that canceling the summer program was unfair to the students involved.
“Once upon a time, we used to bus them … and feed them and the program was thriving,” she recounted. “We had like 50 to 60 kids. It just really grew into a community. And so when they cut it, we were just beside ourselves, because it’s just not fair to the incoming generation of kids.”
Part of the collective’s reason for being is financial: Thomas saw too many unaffordable summer programs.
“I just don’t really believe certain things are only for people that can afford it,” she related. “I have a big heart about it, because I have met some extremely talented students. And I mean students that could, or have, done professional shows.
“We’ve worked with some really great clientele,” Thomas added. “So the lower socio-economic students, I really have a big heart for. Because I don’t find that fair.”
The collective’s summer session is $560 per student; Thomas has spent up to $1,200 in the past for her children to attend camps.
Dagrosa said the collective’s interns will have a prime opportunity to learn about theater.
“I’m really excited for them to get to spend some intense time with these professionals,” he remarked. “With learning the lighting board and learning the sound board and learning what it takes (to put on a show) … To really get a good understanding of what the job is …
“So I’m really excited to give them a hands-on real taste of what that has to offer to see if they decide to go forward with that career.”
Philadelphia residents carried a record 400-foot flag down Locust Street during 2024’s Pride Month celebrations in the city.
