Homer’s Jim Anderson has been involved in theater arts based youth development for over 30 years; he started while living in South Carolina but brought features back to Homer and initially directed a program that lasted over a month with a final production at the end of camp.
“The concept of boot camp is to condense the camp into five days. This year we're adding a sixth day because my instructor said, "Hey, if we had just one more, if we had five full days of instruction, and then one day just for production, that would make our life so much easier,” so it's actually six days. But, it's the concept of sending out the material once they register. But day one is when they really start learning it, rehearsing it, learning the choreography, learning the dialects, working on the set, and everything happens in five days,” Anderson said.
Originally, the program was organized under the umbrella of Homer Council on the Arts and Anderson now directs his own company: Global Arts and Leadership Alliance Project or GAALAP. Broadway Bootcamp is a 6-day theater arts-based leadership intensive with “top industry instructors and educators with a public showcase performance at the Marner Theatre on the last evening, August 6th.” The event is open to all 8th through 12 grade students including 2026 senior graduates.
Instructors for Bootcamp this year are all coming from New York and Los Angeles and bringing specialties in acting, speech and dialect, movement, screenwriting and storytelling. Instructors include Lonnie Quinn, Linda Brennan, Theresa Hayes, John Lewis and Cady McLain. Anderson provided more details on the instructors:
“Everyone's coming from out of state. There’s Cady McLain, she's an award-winning actress. She and Lonnie were on ‘All My Children.’ They were on a couple soaps together back in the day and she has just finished a show on Broadway, and she's filming another TV series ‘Out of Atlanta’ right now. For the four instructors that are return instructors, Lonnie (Quinn) is the head meteorologist at CBS. He studied acting with Sanford Meisner, who is one of the godfathers of acting techniques, and has been in film, television and on Broadway. Dr. Linda Brennan: she has a doctorate in psychology, but she is one of the top dialect coaches for film and television in Los Angeles and coaches a lot of actors that are involved in the industry. And then Terry Hayes, extensive Broadway and touring background with dance and voice, and she now is one of the head judges for ‘Showstoppers’, which is one of the largest dance competitions nationwide. She was the head of instruction for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the West Coast, and then after she retired from that, then she went into Showstoppers, and then she comes up every year to do this. And then John Lewis is an up-and-coming screenwriter, has leveraged a lot of his work with independent film companies and television, and he really brings the art of storytelling,” Anderson explained.
So far 20 students are registered for next week’s event and registration is still open. More details and online registration is available at www.gaalap.com. There is also a scholarship application available there. “It's really easy to register, and if they see the poster around town, they can just click the QR code, take a picture QR code, or go to Gallup.com,” Anderson said.
Anderson talked about some additional goals of the camp:
“My goal is to have this an international camp, so that kids from anywhere in the world can come here to Alaska and have leadership-infused Production curriculum, and because I mean, like I said, I've worked with youth for over 30 years, and that's my passion…But my goal is to have this not be seen as a theater kid activity.This is for every student out there that can develop life skills before they go out into the world to experience failure and rejection and challenges and interviews and this year we have four. This is the first year that we have four alumni students that have participated in boot camps in the last two boot camps, and are coming back this year as alumni students and doing a solo and being a part of the production. So my goal is to continue to grow this.”
Anderson has additional plans for the future:
“The next phase of GAALAP is an adult leadership camp. It's probably not going to be as production focused as this. I don't expect adults. Go through a whole week and produce, you know, production numbers, but it's going to be very creative-based leadership life skill coaching for adults, and it'll be in a camp environment,” he said.
The final performance from Broadway Bootcamp 2026 will be at the Mariner Theater on August 8th at 7pm and will be open to the public with free admission for youth under the age of 12.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
