[Editor’s note: This interview was recorded prior to the SAG strike.]Noah Galvin continues to show off his boundless potential as an actor and also as a filmmaker and storyteller in general with Theater Camp. He’s already found great success on stage and screen, and now he also adds two brand-new credits to his filmography because Theater Camp marks his very first time writing and producing a feature film.

Inspired by the short film of the same name, Theater Camp takes place at AdirondACTS, a theater camp in upstate New York. When its founder (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) must take over even though he knows absolutely nothing about the longstanding traditions that make a summer at AdirondACTS a deeply cherished experience.

With Theater Camp now in theaters nationwide, Galvin took the time to join me for an episode of Collider Forces to look back on his journey in the industry thus far and to discuss the highly collaborative on-set environment that helped make Theater Camp a true gem oozing with love and respect for the theater camp experience — and for stage managers as well.

Image via Sundance

When asked about the performance or personal experience that first inspired him to become an actor. Galvin didn’t hesitate. He immediately recalled seeing his very first Broadway show, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

“There were so many amazing performances in that, Anthony Rapp, Ilana Levine, a young Kristin Chenoweth, but my personal favorite was Roger Bart as Snoopy. He just blew my mind and stole the show multiple times. I had only at that point seen, you know, my sisters’ competing theater productions [laughs], which were lit, but it was the first time I had seen real professional actors on a Broadway stage doing a musical that I had been listening to, which is always a joy. It’s like going to a concert. You know all the music. You just get to sing along to everything, and you feel that much closer to the thing, and it’s that much more impactful and meaningful. And I’ve always admired Roger. His career is exactly what I’ve always wanted. It’s full of variety and longevity. He’s been around forever, and he’s gotten to do everything because he’s trusted and just incredible.”

When beginning his journey following in Bart’s footsteps, Galvin found invaluable sources of support and inspiration at youth theater programs and theater camps. He recalled:

“I went to a place called Northern Westchester Center for the Arts, which was near the town I grew up in, Katonah, New York, and I was taught by amazing youth theater teachers that have all inspired [Theater Camp], and my experience of going to youth theater programs and theater camp. There is a teacher named Amelia DeMayo who was my first voice teacher that I went to starting at the age of nine, and she started working with me and very quickly opened my eyes to the fact that I could do this professionally. It was very foreign to me. To be a child actor was something I never really saw for myself. I just wanted to be on Broadway. And she was like, ‘You can be on Broadway. You can be on Broadway now if you wanted to be,’ and that sort of blew my mind. And she set me up over the phone singing for an agent named Nancy Carson, who was my agent for a long time, and Nancy sent me to an audition for the national tour of Les Mis when I was 10 years old, and I booked it and I was sort of off to the races.”

Image via ABC

Galvin continued to encounter hugely talented individuals who’d also serve as inspiring guiding lights as he navigated his first professional on-screen opportunities. One of the most influential of the brunch? Galvin’s The Real O’Neals co-star and past Collider Ladies Night guest, Martha Plimpton.

“Martha and I come from the same place. We’re both Upper West Siders. We both just have a similar grounded, realistic, slightly wry outlook on life. I immediately connected with her as a person. We were both moving to Los Angeles to be on a family sitcom, and I think I personally never really saw that for myself. I thought I was just gonna be a theater kid my whole life. And Martha had always been on camera, but considers herself a stage actor, and she is one of the best we have. And so the fact that she’s graced our televisions for as long as she has, we should all be very thankful. And so she got to sort of usher me into this world that felt really foreign to me, but she knew exactly where I was coming from and was able to structure this entry into this new world for me in the safest, most satisfying way, familial way possible.”

While Plimpton was a prime example of a collaborator Galvin immediately fell into step with, there have been other creative partnerships that haven’t aligned as well. In fact, Galvin specifically noted that he’s had a tough time seeing eye to eye with the role he brings to screen in Theater Camp — stage managers.

“The people that have maybe broadened my horizons the most or have forced me out of my comfort zone or my personal ways of doing things are the people that inspired my character Glenn Winthrop in Theater Camp, the stage managers, honestly, that I’ve worked with throughout my career. They’re not necessarily on paper the people that I vibe with [laughs]. I can be pretty — not that I’m boundary-less because I do consider myself a very grounded person, but I am not somebody who always shows up on time. I’m not somebody who responds to emails or texts quickly. Quite the opposite. [Laughs] And I do not contain the Type A gene. I’m just very much not that person. And so I’ve been at odds with a lot of stage managers throughout my career. But I’ve had to learn to really find respect for them and I have learned to grow to love these people that make our jobs possible. If we did not have the people keeping the schedule and the people with the little signs on the call sheets that are like, “Five minutes early is on time, on time is late, and five minutes late is unacceptable.” They’re not necessarily people that I’m like, “I would love to just sit down and get a drink,” you know? But at a certain point, I think I always sort of find a bond with them because they too have dedicated their lives to this very specific weird little world, and there’s a common love there that I think is a nice emotional bridge for two people that may not see eye to eye every day.”

Galvin goes above and beyond honoring stage managers via Glenn. In fact, that character gets one of the most rousing arcs of the entire film. Another Theater Camp standout who heavily contributes to the beating heart of the film? Jimmy Tatro’s Troy.

During our Theater Camp interview at Sundance 2023, Galvin mentioned the framing device for the film changed. The filmmakers’ ability to pinpoint the best possible way to invite viewers into this world is of the utmost importance. It needs to be something real-world theater camp attendees will embrace and enjoy, but also something that broadens the audience and helps give viewers with little knowledge of that world a nudge to engage and learn. Eventually, the perfect framing device emerged, and it was Tatro’s Troy.

“When we started writing the movie, we recognized that in order to make the thing as universal as possible — you know, we were making something very specific. We were making a movie about theater camp. Not just camp, but theater camp. Not everybody goes to camp, not everybody likes theater, and so we needed a sort of outsider perspective to bring the audience into this world, or at least the audience who don’t already know and love this world. And so that went through a lot of different iterations, who that person was going to be and what that lens was going to be. At one point it was a novelist writing a book about a [blah, blah, blah]. And then in just getting more and more specific, we landed on Jimmy and we just let Jimmy sort of inspire us.”

Galvin admitted they “wrote a two-dimensional character for him on paper.” He further explained, “We went in with this scriptment we were calling it, a sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm-style outline where we structured everything pretty heavily, wrote jokes and sometimes scenelets or full scenes, but on the day, we really just let people play.” Turns out, that was the optimal working environment for someone like Tatro because he takes what was on the page, makes it his own, and even finds qualities in Troy that Galvin and co. didn’t expect the character to have. Galvin continued:

“We basically just wanted to give him the opportunity to play and so we handed him this character that was our idea of a bro-y vlogger, YouTuber guy, and we just let him run free, and he showed up on the day and just infused this two-dimensional character with a third dimension. He just gave it heart and sweetness in places we didn’t really expect there to be. He blew our minds every day, and he just expanded the whole thing and made it that much larger and that much more emotional.”

Image via Searchlight

Before winding down our chat, we took a moment to look to the future. Theater Camp marks a number of big firsts for Galvin personally, and included quite a few unique filmmaking opportunities as well. It’s his first time writing and producing a feature film, and it’s a film he got to make with friends and frequent collaborators using a scriptment and having the opportunity to evolve the idea throughout the filmmaking process. How does being able to see a project like that through to fruition change Galvin’s personal goals for himself going forward? Here’s what he said:

“I think we’re at such an interesting place in this business right now with the strike that’s going on because I don’t necessarily know what this business will look like in a week, let alone a year from now. I hope that we come out of this in a more equitable landscape for everybody. But I don’t know. Like Roger Bart, I hope to have variety and longevity, and I want to keep expanding and playing roles I haven’t played before. I think I’ve been really lucky to get to do a lot of different things and play a lot of different kinds of people. I don’t know if there’s any one thing that I look forward to doing. I think I just look forward to continuing my evolution and continuing to show people different sides of me and keep proving myself.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Galvin will continue to do just that.

Eager to hear even more from Galvin on his journey in the industry thus far? You can watch his full Collider Forces interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the conversation in podcast form below: