BmoreArt is a creative and critical daily online journal. We believe that Baltimore’s creative class deserves to be discussed, critiqued, and well-informed.
If you’re a theater enthusiast, you know that most musicals have an “I Want” song—the song that lists the drive and motivation for the protagonist. For theater educator CJay Philip, her wants are clear: to fan the creative spark for people of all ages in and around Baltimore.
Philip is the founder and creative director of Dance & Bmore, an organization whose mission is to create meaningful human connections through movement, music, and theater. The organization offers a sweeping range of experiences for everyone from preschoolers to senior citizens. FazaFam, a family-oriented program for children as young as 2 years old, highlights creative play while focusing on fun and physical movement. AMP Camp, AMP Up, and Voices of Carmen offer teens and young adults the opportunity to hone their theatrical skills both onstage and behind the scenes. Dance & Bmore invites adults to participate in workshops and performance showcases through Elder Arts & Wellness, DAB Ensemble, and Bmore Broadway Live. On Philip’s stage, the most important role is a player that is eager to learn. All are welcome to participate, create, and contribute.
After roughly fifteen years connecting communities and generations through the performing arts in Baltimore, Philip received her well-deserved laurels: in June 2024, she was the recipient of the Excellence in Theatre Education Award at the 77th Annual Tony Awards. Fittingly, Dance & Bmore’s students got to share in the prize on November 23, 2024 when Carnegie Mellon University, in conjunction with the Tony Awards, presented Dance & Bmore students with a master class on the performing arts at Cahill Recreation Center.
At this celebratory event, I got the opportunity to talk with Philip about what brought her to this work and why she has dedicated her life to championing theater education.
CJay Philip with Voices of Carmen group in 2019, photo by Jazzy Studios
Dance & Bmore students at the master class provided by Carnegie Mellon University in conjunction with the Tony Awards, photo courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University
I wasn’t the best student, and it cracks me up that I have this award for excellence in education. Meanwhile, I was cutting class and acting a fool. But those teachers who were like, ‘Hey, come to this class, work with me on this monologue,’ I was there for it.
CJay Philip
CJay, as a theater person, I’m endlessly impressed by you and the work you are doing with young people. Can you talk about what it was like to be acknowledged with a Tony Award?
I had the pleasure of being nominated a few times by my staff and my teens for the Excellence in Theatre Education Tony Award. And this past year, I won… out of about 900 people from across the country—which is crazy—and I am grateful. It was quite the whirlwind. Myself, my mom, my husband and Lauren Erazo, who’s my director of operations, and her husband— we all met in New York, had a wonderful weekend. The producers shot a documentary on my weekend experience at the Tonys, and that was new for them.
They were like ‘This is the first year we ever did that. But we are going to be part of your award being presented at the Tonys. Then Carnegie Mellon, who helps to run this award with the American Theater Wing and Broadway League—they’re going to come to Baltimore and do a Master Class with your young people: theater, vocal training, dance training, a little Q&A, and just give them the opportunity to have some really great, sound teaching.’
Carnegie Mellon is one of the top schools for theater in our country. I’ve been just thrilled to see the students learning so much, eating so well, and shining. The CMU staff said ‘We’re actually doing harder stuff than we’ve done in years because y’all can do it. Y’all are here for it. They’re so focused. Their questions are great.”
And I was like “Yes. Brilliant, beautiful, bright Baltimore youth.” That’s what I want everyone to know. That’s who they are today. I’m so thrilled for all of them to be meeting one another and connecting.
Congratulations! Can you talk a little about how you got your start in the creative world and how you ended up in Baltimore?
I’m originally from upstate New York, and then I moved to New York City like a lot of people with a dream of being on Broadway. And thankfully, that dream came true for me. I lived in New York for 18 years. For about 15 of those years, I was working on Broadway, off Broadway, touring nationally, internationally, and even transitioned to being a director and a choreographer in New York and outside of New York.
I had a relatively successful career, definitely had its ups and downs like theater does. It’s not certain, but I also was exposed to the theater behind the scenes working as a dance captain for Hairspray on Broadway. That was actually my first extended visit to Baltimore, to mount the national tour for Hairspray at the Mechanic Theatre, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is a cool city!’ I didn’t know I would move here years later. Then I worked as a dance captain and then as an assistant stage manager on another Broadway show called StreetCorner Symphony.
I started realizing that there are all these career paths in theater that have nothing to do with standing on stage: singing and dancing and acting. And I, as a young person, didn’t realize that. And I know there are other young people who have no idea. They have a love for theater, but maybe they’re not the strongest singer or their leg doesn’t go up to here, but they want to be in that industry. I want to introduce them to ways in which they can participate and engage in theater making.
As I learned, I just wanted to put some of those things in my toolkit. I also taught in New York at several after school programs. I ran a school up in Washington Heights that had a youth program with about 40 different classes from visual arts to fashion, to dance, to music to martial arts. 200 students. About 30 volunteer teachers from New York City. Artists from all over. I ran that program for a full year. Took a full year off from performing and that’s when I started to see just how these caterpillars could turn into butterflies.
I also started realizing that there was a little missing piece with the parents dropping the children off and going away and then coming back. You try as a parent to get information out of a kid, ‘How was class?’ ‘Uh it was fine!’ And meanwhile, the teacher’s like ‘It was more than fine. It was amazing!’ That’s not how children communicate just yet.
So, I wondered what it would look like if parents and children were together in this creative development and discovery. And what if that’s now a shared memory that they have and it’s a part of their household and their culture? That would be beautiful. This became one of the first programs that I started when I moved to Baltimore in 2010. I started my dance company with the FazaFam Family Jam for creativity, for parents, children, grandparents, and just the whole community coming together around music movement and theater making.
It sounds like you believe that theater and creativity should have a really strong foothold in community outreach and community building.
I feel like it’s really innate and we sometimes look back to it and say ‘Oh, we need to make it accessible.’ It already is. There’s church plays. There’s step teams. There’s the family reunion. You turn the song on. You don’t gotta tell nobody to dance. Everybody dancing.
I think it’s just tapping into that culture of the art in your family and in your household. There are griots and storytellers—and it’s just acknowledging that creativity is a part of who we are and naming that. Then leaning into it and saying, let’s invest in it because we know it’s already invested in us our whole lives and we just haven’t been nurturing and paying attention to it. But now we should.
CJay Philip with 2019 Voices of Carmen students, photo by Jazzy Studios
CJay Philip with AMP Up students, photo by Jazzy Studios
The play becomes this device in which we examine our own lives and our own actions and interactions with other people. And that’s where the real transformation begins.
CJay Philip
What does theater education mean to Black and brown kids in Baltimore? How does that enrich them specifically?
For Black and brown people, theater doesn’t feel square and boxy. You’re not boxed in. You get to have a voice and be a contributor and find that leadership and those things and those superpowers that you have and go ‘Oh, I was more of a hands-on learner.’
I wasn’t the best student, and it cracks me up that I have this award for excellence in education. Meanwhile, I was cutting class and acting a fool. But those teachers who were like, ‘Hey, come to this class, work with me on this monologue,’ I was there for it.
I knew I loved learning, so I think it gives young people a way of learning different skills and that may not be how the school system necessarily was designed or built, and they need to navigate both. But I think there’s an opportunity inside of theater making that also allows for their own stories and expression and feelings to be engaged.
Art is transformational. Art can inspire social change. How do you think theater can play a role in that social change?
What’s transformative to me is when you realize you have agency and power. To present work that can connect. Collaboration with another human being. We collaborate quite a bit to develop. We use each other as sound boards. We teach each other how to give and receive feedback that’s constructive. Just the nature of that style of collaboration transforms you and how you listen to other people, right? And even the power that you have to create. You don’t have to rely on what’s already out there, but you have that yourself.
The musical that we do each year, Voices of Carmen, is something I wrote 15 years ago as a musical adaptation of the opera Carmen set in a high school. There are so many conflicts, so much relational baggage in that play. I kept reading these articles about people breaking up with somebody and then violence breaking out or someone losing a life over ‘I don’t want to be with you no more.’ I’m tired of the candlelight vigils where everybody shows up and all the celebrities come and say, ‘Yes, we need to stop this.” There is an opportunity where theater can look at Don José’s relationship with Carmen. Let’s look at this love triangle. Let’s look at this escalating conflict. How did this happen to these characters? How does it happen in our own lives?
We partnered with the House of Ruth of Maryland to unpack what a healthy or unhealthy relationship looks like. We partnered with Restorative Response Baltimore to talk about how conflicts escalate and what kind of language and affective statements we use when dealing with one another.
Then there’s this theater piece. And we’re putting on a play. But the play becomes this device in which we examine our own lives and our own actions and interactions with other people. And that’s where the real transformation begins. You cannot help but examine yourself, and when you do that, that’s when you start to make changes in your own life.
AMP Camp, photo by Jazzy Studios
AMP Up Program Participants, photo by Jazzy Studios
FazaFam Family Jam, photo by Jazzy Studios
No matter where you are in your life, you do not have to age out of creativity or community.
CJay Philip
What inspires you to want to continue this work? What motivates you? What fuels your fire?
I would say it is the young people. When I watch them growing, exploring, and having deep conversations about where they want their lives to lead, or what’s next. I always tell them this program isn’t to make them musical theater people. You can love the theater, but you don’t have to go into show business. I want them to have all the tools they need to do whatever they want: to be a board chair and lead a meeting, to be an entrepreneur.
The way that we are building within our program is also a workforce development and job readiness program. We partner with the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Development. All of our youth are paid via YouthWorks or grants that we receive. We have an arts mentorship program for 16 to 24-year-olds so you never feel like you age out of a program. A lot of people would say, ‘Oh, I remember I used to design.’ I was like, ‘Why used to? When do we age out of creativity? What is that timeline?’ I don’t think we do.
What gets me going is seeing someone who came from our FazaFam Family Jam program with their parents who moved up through our Arts Mentorship Camp as an elementary schooler, who then comes to Voices of Carmen as a teenager, who then works with us on Voices of Carmen or goes to our Arts Mentorship Program and is now teaching in FazaFam, which is when we first met this child, who’s now a grown person. When they walk through the door with their two-year-old for that child’s first class, CJay will be weeping because the circle is complete.
That’s our mission: that at every age and stage of life, we’re making meaningful human connections through music, movement, and theater making. No matter where you are in your life, you do not have to age out of creativity or community in a connected way.
Where is your favorite spot to see local theater? Do you have a favorite show that you’ve seen recently?
This past year I’ve gotten the opportunity to collaborate with the folks at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, and I hadn’t gone to a lot of their shows. I think I went to A Christmas Carol last year and it was really good! I got to work on their Romeo and Juliet that was set in the 70s. I like to see how the sausage is made.
I’ve been so impressed with the shows on that stage and I think one of the reasons why I really also enjoy it is because there is such a robust non-union cast. There’s only one or two people who are union. To see strong quality caliber performances because people are just walking in the room with talent… it doesn’t matter if you’re card holding, not card holding, it’s great work.
Finally, what sort of advice do you have for young people who are pursuing the craft, pursuing themselves? What would you say to them?
Try a lot of things. Experiment. Be a lifelong learner. Show up and know that you belong wherever you are. You’re supposed to be there. Take it in. Take what you need from that moment and bring it with you to the next thing as a life lesson. But yeah, you got to experiment. You got to try some things that are going to stretch you.
And find community. It’s hard out there and the voices in our head can be a trouble spot for some folks. And so being able to have positive folks around who are rooting for you is really important.
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