YMTC (Youth Musical Theater Company) is a non-profit, Berkeley-based company which produces professional caliber musical theater while providing exceptional theater training to students from the 7th grade through university level. We bring together the Bay Area’s most talented and dedicated young singer/actors with professional directors, designers, and musicians to create theater that takes on challenging and sophisticated musical and dramatic themes, and that is always accompanied by a full, live orchestra. From the time it incorporated as a non-profit in 2004, YMTC has grown into a year round production company, producing three fully mounted musicals as well as small scale workshop productions and training workshops throughout the year. Many YMTC graduates have gone on to study music and theater at some of the best conservatories in the United States and abroad; all of them, wherever they go, take with them confidence, empathy, responsibility, and the capacity to imagine. We passionately believe that when young people have opportunities to participate in exceptional training in the arts, they are becoming not only the next generation of artists and arts appreciators, but the next generation of engaged citizens: empowered to pay attention, communicate, and energetically participate in a collaborative process.

Arts & Culture , Arts Education , Children & Youth , Education , Educational Services , Performing Arts , Youth Development Programs

Musical theater productions. During 2013-14, ymtc mounted three full scale productions, involving about 40 students in each production either on or off stage, being trained by and working alongside 7 to 10 theater professionals. The productions were accompanied by between 6 and 30 professional live musicians. The productions spanned a rehearsal period ranging from 4 to 10 weeks each and were produced in a professional theater venue with a total of 18 performances for the public. musical theater education workshops. Five separate workshops were offered during the year, each one training from 8 to 24 students. They were taught by professional teaching artists working in theater in the bay area. Enrollment was non-competitive and on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students were taught skills in character development, improvisation techniques, vocal techniques, movement, musical theater literature, dance, audition skills, and good rehearsal practices. In addition, ymtc conducted a workshop, with 20 students, to assist in the development of a new musical, written by an award-winning composer and playwright.