Getting behind the scenes with the Hammer and Nails Conference

Everything behind the scenes

Angelica Haynesworth found her calling in the seventh grade, when a dance teacher asked for a volunteer to raise the curtain ahead of a performance. Though Haynesworth didn’t know what stage management was, she knew she liked it.

“We all think that we're going to go into acting, because that's what we see in theater. ‘Oh, the stage, I want to be on the stage,’” said Haynesworth, an associate producer at Camden Rep. “We have no idea that we can do everything behind the scenes.”

As coordinator of Hammer and Nails Conference, Haynesworth—in collaboration with founding artistic director Desi P. Shelton and managing director Pamela Bridgeforth—is helping today’s youth see the possibilities of working on the design, technical, or production sides of theater and film.

Referencing a report from Oxford Economics, Bridgeforth noted the live entertainment industry makes a nationwide economic impact of $132.6 billion. Hosting the conference is a way to connect young people with jobs in the creative economy, at a time when there is a known shortage of skilled individuals in technical backstage roles.

“We view ourselves as a community development entity that uses art as our primary tool to focus first on building people—through storytelling, through communicating the stories of women of color in urban communities, and then looking at ways in which we can uplift and train the next generation of artists to do this work in a powerful way,” Bridgeforth said.

For the past ten years, Hammer and Nails has been running under Camden Rep’s P.A.C.E. (Preparing Artists for College Entrance) program, which trains pre-professional young artists and prepares them for college. Haynesworth is a P.A.C.E. success story herself, and alumni of the program have gone on to work on Broadway, and in regional theater and network television.

A talent pipeline

The conference, through support from the American Theater Wing’s Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative, will bring Camden Rep’s youth programming to a wider audience.

Anchoring the daylong conference will be a panel discussion featuring production designer Toni Barton, tour manager and lighting designer Pamela Hobson, lighting designer and theater historian Kathy A. Perkins, and costume designer Marci Rodgers. Attendees will get to meet with experts, as well as participate in a hands-on design and production session.

Camden Rep could be well on its way to creating a new talent pipeline. Organizers hoped to have 30 students attend; twice that number have registered.