The festival is the world’s largest musical theater festival dedicated to groups working with elementary and middle school students.
In 1995, Music Theatre International created MTI Education, the first educational division in a major musical theater licensing company. Over the past 15 years, MTI Education has transformed the marketplace for age-appropriate performance material for young performers with over 50,000 productions of “Junior” and “Kids” Broadway musicals in all 50 states.
As Chairman of MTI, I am proud of MTI Education and the Junior Theatre Festival, which is presented by Music Theatre International (and hosted and produced by iTheatrics and Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars). Young people from all over the United States with different interests work together as a creative team(s) to learn, to perform, to exchange ideas and to demonstrate their inventiveness and creativity. In turn, theater professionals encourage teachers and students to achieve their personal best by offering them musical theater vehicles modified for age-appropriateness and to illustrate techniques of producing and direction with limited resources.
The ultimate goal of the festival is to celebrate and nurture the love of musical theater in young people. We at MTI believe this will help these students perform better in all areas of school with increased attention span, reading skills and articulation. They will be our artists and audiences of the future, but as future citizens, they also learn collaboration, mutuality of respect and collegiality which are the essence of American tradition for our society and define a community.
I am honored that the festival and its awards will now carry my name.