This is the 23d year that South Jersey kids have been saying that. In 1989, career schoolteacher Ed Fiscella started a New Jersey version of the popular and still-going-strong summer children's theater camp that he helped get going in Upper Darby with founder Harry Dietzler in 1976. He even kept the name, with Dietzler's blessing.
Much has happened since.
What began with 65 kids in grades six through 12 and 10 staff members at Glen Landing Middle School in Gloucester Township has ballooned into nine programs that serve more than 500 young people, from second graders through young adults, on Camden County College's Blackwood campus. The staff, which includes former campers and parents, is a larger group than the first summer's campers.
Out of the summer program grew the Mainstage Center for the Arts, which offers theater productions year round and, last year, offered its first subscription series.
For Fiscella, it has meant living his dream.
"My goal ever since college was to be a teacher, to do theater part time and have my own theater," said Fiscella, 58, who retired as a middle school language-arts teacher in 2009. "I'm the luckiest man in the world."
He has spread that luck and love of theater around. While the Upper Darby and Camden County Summer Stage programs aren't the only theater camps in the region, they are among the oldest. The Walnut Street Theatre's summer program also began in 1989.
Thousands of youngsters have gone through and grown up in the programs. Campers report making friendships that last into adulthood. People have met their future husbands and wives at Summer Stage.
Quite a few of the camp's alumni have gone on to perform professionally or work in the entertainment business.
Dietzler said he and his former partner over time had played "a friendly game" of alumni can-you-top-this. Fiscella's past campers include a Miss America, Kate Shindle.
