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STAGEDOOR
Produced & Directed by: Alexandra Shiva.
Director of Photography: Daniel B. Gold, Wolfgang Held & Martina Radwan.
Edited by: Penelope Falk.
Released by: Docurama.
Country of Origin: USA. 79 min. Not Rated.
DVD Features: None.

Stagedoor Manor is one of America’s most renowned and most famous theater camps. Not only can the summer camp name actors like Natalie Portman and Robert Downey, Jr. among its success stories, but it was also the basis for 2003’s Camp, an absurd parody of overindulged theater acolytes, lovelorn and sexually ambiguous teens, where a cross-dressing actor finds out that the only person who isn’t willing to accept his choice of apparel is himself.

Stagedoor could’ve used a little bit of that humor, but what it really needs is some editing. You can’t help but wonder if director Alexandra Shiva was waiting for something to happen that never did. The film vacillates between following the main events of the camp (opening day, rehearsals, two of the student shows, and the final day) and four students with interesting stories and personalities. Shiva probably would have had a much more entertaining film if the focus had stuck to either the students and their social lives or a dissection of the camp’s four-week program.

As it is, we don’t really follow any of the four kids we meet at the beginning. Instead, we see one or two private moments with each, an interview with their families, and one to two statements about the camp from the kids. One camper has attention deficit disorder, another is neurotic and tense, and the third is black (a bizarre rarity of 250 students selected from the New York metropolitan area), and the fourth, a charismatic leader who’s been attending for eight years. But nothing really happens to them. There’s not much else to say about a film whose solitary moment of dramatic tension occurs when a camp counselor cries after the kids start playing a kissing game when they’re explicitly told not to. And from the glimpses of other kids that we’re given, it seems like there were others who would have anchored the film with moments that made similar documentaries like Mad Hot Ballroom so charming. Zachary Jones
April 8, 2007