Footlite Musicals Youth Programs

Footlite Musicals Youth Programs include summer camps, a summer youth production, and a summer children’s workshop that culminates in a fully staged musical. Participants take part in hands-on experience and classes that cover all stages in the production process, including constructing sets, creating costumes, providing technical assistance, and working as stagehands for performances. The programs take place within a musical-only community theater that presents six musical productions each year, including five full-scale Broadway musicals and a summer youth production, and operates as an all-volunteer, 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation powered exclusively by volunteers.

Footlite Musicals was founded in 1955. Its mission is to produce musicals and other dramatic offerings and to provide for education and training of persons in the theatre through hands-on experience and classes in the various stages of dramatic and musical theatre. In July 1991, Footlite Musicals was named America’s “Number One Community Theatre” by winning the national competition of the American Community Theatre Association for a production of Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, and this production then competed in an international competition in Toyama, Japan, in August 1992, where it won several awards. Footlite Musicals productions receive support from the Indiana Arts Commission, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, The Summer Youth Program Fund, Penrod Arts Fair, The Penrod Society, and others, and the organization describes its environment as welcoming and inclusive.

Last updated May 14, 2026.