“I”™m just a Broadway Baby
Walking off my tired feet
Poundin”™ Forty Second Street
To be in a show”
Those Broadway Babies”™ feet belonged to half a dozen 2- and 3-year-old kids in socks on a recent weekday in Mamaroneck. Their teachers in stage costumes, he a struggling theater artist and she a private vocal teacher in their other jobs, belted out the show tune in greeting for the kids and mothers taking seats on the studio floor for their Broadway Babies class.
Some moms and kids had warmed up by playing their “Beauty and the Beast” CD ”“ the thrice-weekly class”™s Great White Way musical fare this week ”“ on the drive over to 114 W. Boston Post Road. If you weren”™t humming the title song when you came in, you were when you left the musically exuberant company of teachers Lou Steele and Michelle Shuttleworth, Applause Theatrical Workshops operations director Heather Capelle and musical director Elizabeth Schenck. Â Â Â Â
Parents paid $550 to enroll their toddlers in this 14-week Broadway Babies class, one of the performing arts programs offered in Mamaroneck to children from four months old to 18 by Applause Theatrical Workshops Inc. The 13-year-old Manhattan company, with annual revenue of $2 million, expanded from its thriving East Side base to Westchester County in January, following its family of customers.
Now in its second season or semester in a 2,400-square-foot former party- hosting space, the Westchester business grew from 62 students to 200 students in six months and classes from twice a week to five times weekly. The company already is looking for annex space in Mamaroneck to accommodate strong demand for its Broadway Superstars classes for 6- to 12-year-olds, said co-founder and owner Audrey Kaplan.
“The growth has been tremendous,” in Westchester. “I think mostly it”™s word of mouth. We do street fairs. We”™re performing everywhere and we do tons and tons of birthday parties.” Good advertising: performing at one child”™s Saturday birthday party, “That”™s 30 children who know about us,” she said.Â
“I think the move to Westchester was a very natural move for us,” said Kaplan, a former New York CityUpper East Side school led a group of parents to approach her about teaching their children in a private studio setting. She started the business with that 15-student class of “tweens” in 1995. elementary teacher and stage and television soap opera actor. Her talent for staging extraordinary student shows at her
Five years later, a pregnant Kaplan started her Broadway Babies program after realizing that none of the competition was doing hit Broadway tunes for children. “They didn”™t do the music I did and that I grew up with,” she said. “Nobody does Broadway. There is competition for children”™s programs, but there”™s nothing that celebrates the arts, that celebrates this genre of music.”
Combining structured instruction with entertainment, the Broadway classes have a waiting list in Manhattan. Revenue “has grown every semester that we”™ve been open,” Kaplan said.
“The mission of my program has changed since the years have gone on. Really the mission now is to expose all of my students in Broadway musical theater in the hopes that one day they will become theatergoers” and supporters of the arts.
Many parents start their first child in the Applause programs in Manhattan, Kaplan said. A second child too takes classes for a couple years “and then there”™s an exodus” with the birth of a third child. “That”™s when a lot of families make choices” to leave the city for the suburbs. “I find that a majority of families move to Westchester, in Scarsdale, Larchmont, Rye, Chappaqua.”
In Mamaroneck, “Some of our kids were Babies in the city and now they”™re in our Superstars class here,” said Capelle, who directs Westchester operations. “It”™s been great to have a place here,” where the company employs about 10 staff members who welcome the respite from the city.Â
Especially for the youngest classes, “It”™s really about exposure to live music and a place for moms to be able to get together and meet other moms their age,” Capelle said. Classes for older children are more performance-oriented and each class prepares production numbers performed at the end of the semester.
Applause Theatrical Workshops also has opened a space in Roslyn, Long Island, and the company is considering expanding to New Jersey. “I definitely think we are going to be concentrating in a big way on Westchester,” Kaplan said. “A lot of people want high quality out there and I think they seek it out.”
In Manhattan, “People are calling us now to do private groups” outside of the company studio, Kaplan said. “I think it”™s convenience” for parents whose children lead tightly scheduled and busy lives. “I think that that”™s going to come in Westchester.” Applause already offers a private after-school program at QuakerRidge School in Scarsdale.
The Westchester market “is not quite the city at this point,” Kaplan said. “You have people that have to make more decisions based on finances out there, where they have three or four kids. ”¦I have a few more people ask about the price there, and we don”™t ever get asked about price in the city.”
Kaplan said her business only recently began to feel the effects of the troubled economy. “I think right now there are definitely people saying, ”˜This is expensive.”™ We didn”™t hear that before. I think they”™re limiting their choices now. You have to be in the running for their choice. You have to be good enough that you”™re the one they pick.” Â
