After our opening night performance of "New Voices of 2010: Pure Imagination" at the Paper Mill, I heard a student say, "And that's why I love performing." I couldn't agree more. Performing on the Paper Mill stage was such an exhilarating experience. Being on that stage invokes a feeling of pride and passion that no other stage has invoked before. Performing in New Voices reminded all of us in the senior company at the Paper Mill Conservatory why we love performing. This summer I could have gone back to sleep-away camp in Pennsylvania, I could have attended a college program at a university …

This week at the Paper Mill Musical Theater Conservatory was a busy one for the senior company. In addition to it being the final week for all of our classes, rehearsals for the New Voices concert became longer and more intensive with the performance in less than one week's time. In Musical Theater we worked on performing duets and trios, which married the idea of a two-person scene to a musical performance. I teamed up with township resident Rebecca Van Voorhees to perform "I Think I Got You Beat" from "Shrek The Musical." At the end of the week, the entire senior company gathered in the …

"Bit by bit, putting it together.Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art." This is a lyric from the opening medley of the New Voices Concert, originally from "Putting It Together" from Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George." It is especially fitting to the senior company at the Paper Mill's Summer Conservatory. We've been rehearsing daily for hours on end, section by section, bit by bit, to make "New Voices of 2010: Pure Imagination," our culminating concert that's opening in less than two weeks, the best it can be. Since the cast list was released, the last two hours of each day …

Character. If there's one predominant word that applies to all that we've learned in two weeks at the Paper Mill Musical Theater Conservatory, this is the one. If we're able to become a convincing character, we can: Fully convey the meaning of a song, Match our physical movement with dynamic emotions in a dance, Bring a scripted scene or a monologue from a two-dimensional script on paper to a very real three-dimensional life. At the conservatory in the past weeks, we've discovered character truly drives musical theater in all of its aspects. Without it, the audience will not be able to …