Ogunquit Playhouse Foundation

The Ogunquit Playhouse arts academy held all programs on the Playhouse grounds and included tuition based courses for ages 5-18 and public tickets sales for our children's theatre shows held on the main stage. All classes, workshops and seminars were staffed by professional teaching artists both locally and from the broadway community. Our education director and associate education director, a new fulltime year round position developed for 2023, oversaw all programming. Summer 2023 had 10 weeks of programming with distinct and unique one, two, and three week programs. Our popular musical theatre performance camps included students aged 10-18 and included the musicals disney's "finding nemo jr.", "descendants", and "the spongebob musical, youth edition". These three shows were performed on our main stage in the Playhouse. These performaces were advertised and sold to the public through our box office. Over 6,300 people attended these performances. Students aged 5-7 performed with our rising stars program which included the musicals "science fair spectacular", "lemonade the musical", and "when i grow up the musical". Our 8-11 year olds performed with our center stage program, which presented the musical "we are monsters". Our rising stars and center stage programs are held in our colony rehearsal space. Tickets are not sold to the public. Parents, friends and family attend the final presentation for free. During 4 weeks during the early fall we ran one program that was developed in conjunction with our main stage production of the sound of music. This was an audition workshop to prepare students to audition for the von trapp children. We also held local auditions for the show and over 115 people auditioned locally. The nine children cast all had attended the audition workshop. The academy had 225 students participate during the course of the summer and fall. Students participating traveled from our immediate region as well as students who traveled from new hampshire, massachuchetss, conneticut, California, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, and new york to participate.

The Ogunquit Playhouse provides rentable set pieces/costumes/wigs/props to other organizations. In 2022, set pieces/costumes/wigs/props were rented out to six different nonprofit theaters, and one high school. There was difficulty in renting our set pieces due to most theaters still recovering from the pandemic.

The Ogunquit Playhouse performed its first season back in the Playhouse building for the first time since 2019. Over 80,000 patrons visited the Playhouse. The Playhouse presented 4 shows. The regional premiere of the cher show from may 12 - june 25; the regional premiere of beautiful september 15 - october 30 and two world premieres. The nutty professor, final musical by marvin hamlisch, from july 1 - august 6 and mr. holland's opus from august 13 - september 10.