HISTORY

The History of Rex Arts

It all started on the historic campus of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, when Nathan Brewer created the musical theatre program for the Westminster Conservatory in the summer of 2003.  The popularity of these programs resulted in expanding camps in partnership with the Township of Plainsboro, NJ Recreation Department the following year. 

Nathan Brewer and Sharon Lawton previously led the children and youth music programs at Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church, growing one choir with 8 kids into a thriving program of 4 choirs with over 75 singers, and an annual musical theatre camp that presented four original musicals each summer between 1999-2009. In 2012, they created a 501(c)3 nonprofit educational performing arts organization called Recreational Arts, to take over the existing programs in Plainsboro, and expanded to partner with multiple other recreation departments throughout New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.  

In 2013, Steven Altinel and Nathan Brewer launched a pre-professional musical theatre training program called the Long Island Musical Theatre Festival at Walt Whitman High School.  This program quickly grew and moved to the campus of Adelphi University, learning with Broadway composers Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Lippa, Broadway director Susan H. Schulman, Broadway designer Gregg Barnes, and performing with legendary artists including Melba Moore, Mykal Kilgore, Alice Ripley, Jay Armstrong Jordan, Rema Webb, Heidi Blickenstaff, and Liz Callaway. 

In 2014, Dr. Danielle Maggio offered our first free musical theatre camps for historically underserved kids in McKees Rocks, PA, and continued these programs for 10 years in partnership with a nonprofit organization called Focus on Renewal.  In 2025, we partnered with the Trenton Children’s Chorus, and Passage Theatre Company, to offer free musical theatre camps in Trenton, NJ, and partnered with LEAD PS 359 in The Bronx to offer weekly music classes for a school without funding for a music program.  These free programs positively changed the lives of over 200 kids in just one year.

Rex Arts has never, and will never, turn away a student who cannot afford our programs.  Reach out to us, or to our recreation department partners, if you might qualify for assistance.  

We are thankful for our incredible teachers, website and art designer, Emily Bouman, and board of directors: Nathan Brewer, Kathy Duffy, Dana Frishkorn, Sharon Lawton, Andrea Schiavoni, Cassidy Jones Shamey, and who support this organization with their time and effort because they understand the powerful ways in which these programs make us all a “little better at everything”.