Broadway performer from Tabor, Iowa coaches rural kids at a week-long camp

Kelli James, a Broadway actress from Tabor, Iowa is partnering with the Tanner Foss Project to bring musical theater training to teens in Iowa and Nebraska. Broadway Advantage is a five-day performance camp for middle and high school students held this year in Nebraska City. Students attend the camp for free, which is funded through donations.

• The Tanner Foss Project is based in Malvern, Iowa and was founded in memory of an East Mills High School graduate who loved music and passed away at nineteen.
• “So, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful, if I went back home and was able to bring to the rural kids the kind of opportunity that I never had in Tabor, Iowa,” said Kelli James, who appeared in multiple Broadway shows and national tours.
• Tony Award-winning actor, Anthony Crivello has known James for decades and joined her for the week-long camp. He said there were important teachers in his life, so now he's "paying it forward."
• The students will perform a concert on Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Nebraska City High School. The concert and cast party are $45 per ticket and support the program.

BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Rural kids from Nebraska and Iowa are getting a unique opportunity this week to learn from Broadway performers.

I’m your neighborhood reporter, Katrina Markel, in Nebraska City at the Broadway Advantage camp.

Tabor, Iowa native Kelli James met her friend, Tony Award winner Anthony Crivello, performing in ‘Les Miz.’

Kelli: “Original Broadway company”

This week, the musical theater pros are in Nebraska City, working with the Iowa-based, nonprofit Tanner Foss Project; a program that provides arts opportunities for young people.

Crivello grew up in inner-city Milwaukee and both he and James see this as a chance to give back.

“So, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful, if I went back home and was able to bring to the rural kids the kind of opportunity that I never had in Tabor, Iowa,” said James.

“It’s paying it forward ... I was an inner-city kid and I had a couple of key teachers,” Crivello said.

Paying it forward to kids like 17-year-old Olivia Nelson from Valparaiso, Nebraska. She’ll study theater at Pittsburgh’s Point Park University in the fall.

“Most people out here tell you, you can’t do that, you’re in the middle of nowhere, you don’t have the resources,” said Nelson. “I think it helps drive me knowing that it’s not impossible and I can do it.”

The Tanner Foss Project is named in memory of James’ bother’s stepson, a student at East Mills High School who died eight years ago at the age of nineteen.

“I think it was the luncheon after his service that it kind of dawned on us that, we can do this,” said Leslie Whitehill, Tanner’s mom.

For Whitehill and her husband Kevin, it’s a way to create a legacy for a young man who loved music. The project is also about building confidence and community...

“We’ve had kiddos that have moved up,” said Kevin Whitehill. “After three or four years were actually performing solos or doing great stuff on stage that they couldn’t even fathom to think that they could have done that.”

Thanks to donors, teens attending receive scholarships and attend for free. The camp culminates with a concert at Nebraska City High School on Saturday and Sunday.