Camp Green Lane 100th Summer Blog Post, July 26th

Tonight, we’re going to be Cool at Camp.

At least the Seniors and Greeks are.

Some of you may know that a group of CGL alumni (myself included) wrote a musical about overnight camp called Cool at Camp. Over the past three years we have written, scored, cast, choreographed, marketed, and got our show up, running, and on the road. We dazzled people in the greater Philadelphia area, entertained the heck out of those in North Jersey, wowed our friends in West Chester, and shocked (in a good way) our friends at the shore. After receiving feedback, we scrutinized, rewrote and reworked the show until we were ready to send it up to the big lights of (off-) Broadway last week. Yes, our little show about overnight camp was accepted into an off-Broadway festival and played three shows to sell-out crowds.

Before I toot my own horn too much, I should point out that Cool at Camp literally exists because of Camp Green Lane.

Four of us who grew up and have very deep roots here wrote the show, and every scene, every song, every inside joke, and every heartfelt moment is rooted in the memories we made at this place. We didn’t have to invent what camp feels like, we just had to remember it. The friendships, the firsts, the cheers, the traditions, the wacky parents, the ridiculous games, the beautiful chaos, the laughter… it was all already here, waiting to be turned into a musical.

It turns out that when you’ve been lucky enough to spend your summers at a place like CGL, you carry those experiences with you forever. Sometimes they become stories you tell your kids. Sometimes they become the reason you send your own children to camp. And, if you’re really lucky (or slightly crazy), they become a full-length musical that somehow ends up playing Off-Broadway.

So tonight, our Seniors and Greeks will get to watch a video from last week’s festival together (the younger ones aren’t quite ready for some of the themes yet). They’ll laugh at things that feel familiar, recognize pieces of their own camp experience, and maybe even see themselves on stage. My hope is that years from now, when they’re reminiscing about their summers at CGL, they’ll realize they were living the next chapter of the story all along.

Because the best part about Cool at Camp isn’t that it made it to Off-Broadway.

It’s that it started right here.

– Aunt Robin