Idina Menzel’s most rewarding audience
Broadway star helps girls find confidence through the arts.
NEW YORK As a Broadway veteran, Idina Menzel is accustomed to large audiences. But she can be intimidated by smaller ones.
For the past four summers, Menzel has spoken with groups of girls ages 10-14 from underserved urban communities who attend summer camp through her A Broader Way Foundation.
“Sometimes I get up in front of them and speak about self-esteem and confidence and taking risks, and my heart is pounding,” says Menzel, 43, preparing to perform at a fundraising event where several campers would be present. “I feel more responsibility, and more nerves, talking to them than I do getting up onstage to sing.”
The program, which accommodated 30 girls from New York City schools in its first season,
will bring 60 this year to Bard College at Simon’s Rock, in the Berkshires. For two weeks, they’ll swim, go rock-climbing and study creative and performing arts with theater pros — among them A Broader Way’s co-founder Taye Diggs (Menzel’s ex-husband) and composer Jeanine Tesori, a Tony nominee this year for Fun Home.
Most of the campers probably know Menzel — who’s being honored for her work by USA TODAY’s Make A Difference Day — as the voice 2D of Elsa in Frozen, or from her appearances on TV’s Glee. Perhaps their older sisters know her as Wicked’s original Elphaba, a role that earned the singer/actress a Tony in 2004.
“I think the girls are sometimes surprised to hear that someone who has this big voice can have trouble finding her own voice sometimes,” Menzel says. She attended camp as a child in Upstate New York and “it was a sanctuary for me — a salvation.”
To recruit campers, Menzel says, “we go to different schools and after-school programs and ask if there are any girls they think would benefit from this. They don’t necessarily need to be able to kick their leg up to their nose or sing. What we’ve found is that they do a lot of amazing writing. We journal with them, and the poetry and storytelling that comes out is incredible.”
The campers draw on that material to put together a 30-minute show at the end of their stay. “It was important to me that since we’re using the arts to help these girls find their creative selves, we don’t just put on Guys and Dolls,” Menzel says. “They’re really surprised by what they’re capable of, and moved by it.”