Junior Theater Festival
Join us for JTF ’25
We’re headed back to JTF West in Sacramento, CA! Join us for a weekend filled with musical theater workshops, professional performances, and theater friendships. Each troupe performs fifteen minutes from a Broadway Junior show for adjudication by a panel of musical theater experts. The weekend also features professional development for teachers, workshops for students and parents, a New Works Showcase featuring new musical adaptations soon to be released and concludes with a grand finale concert headlined by Broadway’s best!
Ages: 8 years old through senior year in high school
Audition Dates: August 3rd with your semester audition and August 4th, Required Dance Call
Travel dates: February 6-10, 2025
Pricing: TBD
Our 2025 Junior Theater Festival show is Seussical, JR! If you are interested in being a part of our JTF ‘25 journey, please complete the information form below. Completing this form does not commit you to the trip, nor does it guarantee you a spot in the cast. It does put you on our JTF email list and helps us with our show and trip planning.
JTF ’24
Our first trip to JTF was a success! Congratulations to our cast and creative team on a fantastic performance, adjudication, and trip overall! For our 15 minute cut of James and the Giant Peach, JR our group was recognized festival-wide for their Excellence in Acting! Riley M. (Centipede) and Elliott G. (James) were chosen as our group’s All Stars, and Piper A. was recognized for her Outstanding Individual Performance as our Ladahlord! Shout out to our official Social Media Ambassadors, Charlotte B. and Sawyer S., for their creative work! Emma D., Mia M., Laine C., and Eliana T. competed in the Tech Olympics alongside our new friends from Poland! Dylan H. and Piper A. were selected to audition, and were both called back, for iTheatrics’ Special Projects for Broadway Jr.’s Choreography Videos. And finally, Miller D. was selected as a concert soloist and performed a duet, “Alone in the Universe” from Seussical, with Broadway’s own Andrew Barth Feldman. It was an incredible trip full of fantastic performances, workshops, feedback, and friends.
Director: Rozz Grigsby
Choreographer: Ashlyn Adams
Music Director: Chad Haney
Stage Manager: Lauren Leppke
Lyric Academy and the Junior Theater Festival
The Junior Theater Festival program at Lyric is designed to be a heightened theatre learning experience for students of all ages. It is the rare opportunity for our youngest to perform alongside our most experienced and for new students to find their place quickly. We expect every student to be involved in every part our 15 minute performance. There is no backstage, and there is no place to hide! We expect our older students to be leaders and we expect our youngest students to learn the material that everyone is learning.
Lyric’s JTF program requires serious commitment from students, parents and the creative team. Our goal is to help our young performers grow into creative, collaborative, compassionate, professional, kind, hard-working young adults. To enrich and enhance the students skills in acting, dance, voice, and rehearsal etiquette. To create a positive and safe environment where students are free to take risks, be bold, be their true selves, and embrace the uniqueness of those around them.
We are intentional about creating a cast that is supportive of each other. In a 15 minute performance, with no props, no costumes, no set, you have to rely on your skills, and more importantly, each other to tell the story. JTF is designed to be an ensemble driven experience and we will operate with that mentality. Every show has lead or named roles, but without an ensemble, it’s just a voice recital!
In our JTF program they will enhance their performance skills, but it goes beyond that. JTF, and the producing organizations (iTheatrics, Music Theatre International, Playbill, and Disney Musicals) want students to understand there is more to theatre than what you see on stage. Students can participate in the technical theatre track. We have had the opportunity to meet Broadway composers and book writers. We have learned about the songwriting experience, and students are been exposed to how social media can bring awareness to our art form. We also learn about the importance of creating theatre that is inclusive and accessible to all.
The JTF experience doesn’t have to end after the festival. iTheatrics offers summer academies in New York City for all students, and every year they hold auditions for choreography videos. As students get older, there are internship opportunities for college students at the festival and during the summer.