Miami Childrens Theater History

Angie Ardolino, Miami Childrens Theater Founder

The Miami Childrens Theater (MCT) is a performing arts production company founded with the purpose of introducing love and joy of the performing arts to children and young adults. Miami Childrens Theater’s solid reputation as an artistic and educational company is based on its respect for its students and fulfilling our original motto of “MCT is children’s theater for children and by children.”

MCT was founded in 1996 by Angela Ardolino. Ms. Ardolino has developed and directed innovative programs for children for over twenty years. MCT insists on using the performing arts to instruct, console, entertain, and inspire the lives of our young actor in a fun and nurturing environment. From its inception Miami Childrens Theater has been vigilant in molding the character of its students and setting positive role models for its students.

MCT started as an after school program at the Coral Gables Youth Center. Originally called the Coral Gables Creative Players, Angie quickly grew out the program to included classes and the original Creative Camp – MCT’s summer camp program.  Creative Camps was an instant hit – combining theater, magic, storytelling, filmmaking and many other creative outlets for its campers.  MCT’s summer camps were quickly recognized by South Florida media as being one of the premiere summer camps in Miami.

The theater side of MCT was also growing in size, scope and critical recognition. At one point in time Ms. Ardolino was staging two plays at a time at the Youth Center – Show A practiced Mondays and Wednesdays and Show B practiced Tuesdays and Thursdays. True to MCT tradition, the quality and excellence of the shows were never compromised and MCT students did everything from fairytales to Shakespeare.

A turning point for Miami Childrens Theater occurred in the 2002 when MCT was the first children’s theater in the nation to be granted rights to the student edition of Les Miserables. The high production value of MCT’s original production of Les Miserables serves as a benchmark in our company’s artistic achievement.

In 2004 Miami Childrens experienced another milestone. MCT won the bid to become the “house theater” at the newly constructed Russell Theater at the Dave and Mary Alper JCC in Kendall. The Russell Theater is a state-of-the-art multi-million dollar theater that remains our home to this day – allowing Miami Childrens Theater the luxury of staging separate productions at both the Coral Gables and Kendall locations. With the addition of the new space Ms. Ardolino formed Broadway Bound, a summer camp program for teenagers. Broadway Bound puts up finished, costumed, main stage productions in four weeks and has developed into the most prestigious musical theater training ground in the state of Florida.

Sixteen years later, Miami Childrens Theater finds its students excelling the finest theater universities in the world, on Broadway and national tours, in television and feature films. We are most proud when our alumni come back to visit and tell us it was the “life lessons” they picked up at MCT they remember most.