About
Center Stage Youth Theatre is a theatre program dedicated to providing quality workshop, rehearsal and performance experiences for central South Carolina children and teenagers. We produce four major shows a year in various venues, offer year round workshops for all age groups, as well as summer day camps and special field trip opportunities.
While we consider that we are a training program for young actors and strive to instill in our students the qualities and work ethic of professional performers, we are also devoted to nurturing the positive impact that creative drama and theatre education can have on a young person’s physical, emotional, social and cognitive development.
Susan Scaccia graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre arts with a concentration in Acting and Directing from Castleton State College in Vermont, where she won the President’s Scholarship. She studied classical voice training for 10 years, and has now completed 28 graduate credits toward her Master’s Degree in Special Education. Before relocating to Columbia this past October to be near her favorite local resident, her mom, she co-founded and for seven years directed the Rutland Youth Theatre , a program for young performers ages 4 – 18, in conjunction with the Rutland, Vermont Parks and Recreation Department. While with the Rutland Youth Theatre, Susan discovered that attention to the learning style and strengths of each individual child in combination with providing training as pre-professionals in the theatre served her students well towards not only their collaborative goal of creating four lively, energetic full length productions each year, but also as tools they could carry with them in their everyday life as well-rounded, imaginative, self-confident individuals.
Susan seeks to provide her new students with opportunities for workshops, classes, day camps, rehearsal and performance opportunities that will nurture them toward becoming pre-professionals in a theatre company they can be proud of, while at the same time developing in them an awareness of themselves as creative and fully competent, responsible individuals. Susan hopes to engender in young actors a sense of their own importance as an integral part of the theatre company while encouraging in them the same admiration for all others involved. She looks forward with great anticipation to many productive years meeting and working with young people and their families here in the Columbia area.
