♪ Tomorrow I love you tomorrow ♪ You're always a day away ♪ Tomorrow tomorrow - We're an arts community center.

We really believe that the arts is the heart of any community.

It is what gives our young people, the generations coming up a sense of culture.

Not only for their current what's happening, but also for their past and a place to come to, to feel comfortable and it's home.

- So I can bend good and evil to my will.

I mean to our will.

(joyful music) - Having my background in education, I was a teacher in Florida, my husband's like, "You know you've done this before for people, why don't you do it for you?"

So I was like, "Okay."

I talked to a few parents that I had out at Eureka and I said, "Would you like to do something outside of school, an acting class and so forth."

Went to Eureka College, asked if I could use space.

They said yes.

And I had six kids in the technically first session of Nitsch Theater Arts and we had no stage space and no costumes, no props, and we still did classes in performing.

And within six months I had a class there and one in Mackinaw.

Ended up doing two different musicals that summer.

- Or C, turn it over to the proper authorities.

- We realized we really, really needed to look into getting our own space.

One of my board members happened to drive by this building and said, "Hey, there's a sign up."

And my husband and I drove here and took a look in the window and we went, "This could be our home."

♪ We got all the way ♪ Rotten to the core ♪ I'm rotten to the core ♪ Rotten to the core ♪ I'm rotten to the core ♪ Who could ask for more - We now have, we have a spot in Peoria, Eureka, Bloomington, Tremont and here in Washington.

(light upbeat music) We are set up right now for "Disney's Descendants," which is happening with our stage kids.

The stage is also, it was really important for us that it also be accessible for all of our students because we have students of varying abilities because we're a completely inclusive program 'cause we want them all to be involved.

So we're really excited about that we've been able to rebuild the space, which was a church.

Churches are hard spaces to redo and find new purposes for and we think we've done a pretty good job in this space.

♪ We were bad, now we're good ♪ Guess we just misunderstood ♪ Bad is good good is bad ♪ We're the best you ever had - [Kelleen] We never turn away a student as long as there's space in a program.

I had a teacher who did that for me once.

That's kind of why I feel like I am where I am.

We scholarship them and we scholarship about 30% of our students in one way or another.

(light upbeat music) - We've got performing of course, singing, dancing, acting, all of it.

We do straight plays and musicals.

And then we also have our acapella group.

We have a singing and dancing like children's choir too.

And then we also have Tech Kids, which is a program, they learned all sorts of different skills.

We've got teaching lighting, painting and building sets, helping with costumes, helping with wigs, makeup classes, dance classes.

We've got a little bit of everything.

- [Kelleen] We start from age three with Stage Tots.

We hold our musical theater dance classes here.

We have our Tech Kids program is also held here.

Have our Lego explorers and engineer club that is here.

So bunches of classes, imagine it and it can be done.

Our young artist program, we started doing summer camp last year in the mornings, arts themed summer camps and then fun afternoon camps.

And then we also rent out our spaces to other organizations.

(kids singing indistinctly) - [Kelleen] What we hope it does for the community is everyone's always saying that young people need places to be, quality places to be.

That's our thing, we high expectations of our students, the best quality we can give them, safe place to be, build confidence.

We're hoping we're providing that for our community here in Washington.

- For a long time I didn't have like a place where I felt like I had like friends or a place where I felt like I had community, I'd done sports and a bunch of other activities, but until I had like discovered theater, I never had any like confidence.

And so being here and being able to do theater at Nitsch has been really imperative to my life.

(light upbeat music) - Hopefully they find a place where they can be themselves and they find their tribe, they find their group.

It has been a home away from home ever since I was little.

And I'm just so grateful to see how far we've come from performing in tiny theaters wherever we can find space to having our own building and being able to have so many kids do the program has been really, really great to see our growth and support and participation.

It's a great place to be and it's really helped inspired me to, you know, pursue my dreams and chase the craft that is theater.

- It's kind of the dream to, you know, to have them come together.

They're here, they support each other all through the love of arts.

(upbeat music) ♪ The daughter of an evilicious queen ♪ ♪ Like me (upbeat music) (audience clapping)