What if I told you that one of the kids standing on a Broadway stage right now — in Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the production Netflix filmed for streaming — learned how to act in a studio off Route 33 in Freehold.
What if I told you the kid whose part Adam Sandler kept making bigger — on set, mid-shoot, because he liked what he was watching — has trained in that same suite since he was seven years old.
What if I told you the kid who plays Mariska Hargitay's son on SVU was sent there by the show's own people, because the best young actors they keep auditioning come from one address.
That address is a place called Actors Playground. It's been in Freehold since 2005. It's twenty minutes from the Netflix campus going up at Fort Monmouth. And almost nobody outside the building knows it's there.
That's about to change.
The man who built it is Ralph Colombino. But he'd be the first to tell you this isn't a story about him. It's a story about a room — and what twenty years of the right room can do.
The cut.
Ralph trained with William Esper. If you don't know what that means — Esper was one of the great American acting teachers, a Sanford Meisner protégé, and the conservatory program he ran at Rutgers' Mason Gross was a cut program. Started with thirty-two students. Seven graduated. Ralph was one of the seven.
He's taught since the year he finished. Mason Gross for fifteen years. Then all over the state. He did a program Governor Kean started that brought arts education into classrooms that didn't have any. He's been working with young actors for thirty-five years.
In 2005 he opened his own school.
Why he opened it.
He was working at another school in Red Bank. The boss was charging students extra to record their self-tape auditions — on top of tuition. Ralph thought that was nuts. He told the boss: these kids are already paying us. If we tape them for free and they nail the audition, the casting director remembers them. Even if they don't book it, we win. We charge the people who don't go here.
The boss disagreed. He just wanted the money.
Ralph opened Actors Playground in Eatontown in 2005. Moved it to Freehold in 2010. The move was the best decision he made — more space, more rooms, more flexibility. Twelve teachers now. All of them working actors or directors. He won't hire anyone who isn't actively pursuing their own dream.
That last part stuck with me. Everyone teaching them is a working artist. Not a retired actor. Not a frustrated MFA. Working artists in the room — sometimes covering each other's classes because somebody booked a job. The kids see that. The kids see what the life actually looks like.
The sanctuary.
Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen came to see him one day. Their son Sam had been taking classes for a couple of months. Patti did most of the talking. She told Ralph there was nothing like this anywhere, and she called it a sanctuary for young artists. Bruce, in his own way, said the same thing.
That's the line. Sanctuary. Ralph repeated it to me twice.
It's a judgment-free zone. There's a sign on the wall that says BE NICE OR LEAVE. Kids on the spectrum. Kids with ADHD. Kids who got told they couldn't act by their high school theater director and walked in shaking. Kids who never get cast in school plays. Ralph told me one of the things he loves most is the moment when a kid finishes a scene and another kid in the class — unprompted — says, that was amazing. He said it's often the first time those kids have heard validation from a peer in their life.
You don't forget that.
I told Ralph my daughter's an artist. She draws. She's good at it. She doesn't always feel cool in school for it. He laughed. He said those are the kids. Those are the kids who end up being the most successful, because once they get one win — once they get one moment of belief — they're unstoppable. Their well-being comes first. The booking comes second.
He told me they're not trying to get as many students as possible. They're trying to get the right students. Around 180 to 200 at any given time. He started kids at seven for years. Recently he found a teacher — Renee Green — who could handle five and six year olds. That's the hardest age to teach, he said. I waited until I found the right person.
The kids you'd recognize.
Shea Grant is currently playing Joyce Maldonado in Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway. She started as understudy. She's playing the lead now. Ralph told me she walks off stage more exhausted than any student he's ever sent into the world — and Netflix filmed the original cast for a future streaming release.
Dylan Pitanza has been at Actors Playground since he was seven. He's twenty-one. He just shot a Happy Madison film coming out this summer — Don't Say Good Luck, a Netflix release on August 14 — and at the wrap party, Adam Sandler told him: you know why your part kept getting bigger? Because I kept writing more for you. I liked what you were doing.
Sandler wrote the character expansion because of him.
Ryan Buggle plays Mariska Hargitay's son on Law & Order: SVU. Eight years in. He could've gone anywhere for his coaching and self-tapes. The producers told him: the best kids we get come from Actors Playground. Go there. He's been with Ralph for three years.
Sam Springsteen. Bruce's youngest. Was there years ago.
Ralph could go down the whole list. He didn't. He said this instead:
Translation: he doesn't sell the resume. He sells the room.
The work they make.
And it isn't only about auditions. Ralph writes. His original social-issue play, Lost Angels, has been touring high school assemblies across the tri-state for ten years — and runs at the school's second home inside the Count Basie Center for the Arts. The kids here don't only train for other people's stories. They put their own in front of rooms full of their peers.
And not just the kids.
Here's the one I keep coming back to. Ralph was coaching a young actor named Sofia — working her craft, same as everyone. Her father turned out to be Berto Colón: Power Book II, Orange Is the New Black. Berto was running self-tapes in the city, got caught in a pinch one day, and came out to the studio to put one down.
His agent watched it and told him it was one of the best auditions he'd ever turned in. Do all of them here from now on.
He's booked plenty since — mostly because he's that good. The most recent one you'd know: Dutton Ranch. He's also the first guest on our podcast next week. The area keeps closing its own loops.
How he found me.
This is the part I keep thinking about.
Ralph saw what I've been posting on Instagram. He saw the Hollywood East name. He didn't know me. He didn't have a reason to reach out other than this: he thought I was telling the right story about the area, and he wanted to introduce himself.
He told me about an old classmate of his — John DiMaggio. The voice of Bender on Futurama. They went through Esper together. John has been in Los Angeles for twenty-five years. He just moved back. Ralph said he asked him why now, and John told him: dude, I can do everything from here. And everything is going to be here soon.
That's somebody who's been working in voiceover at the top of the industry since the nineties saying the gravity has shifted east. Ralph repeated it to me with the energy of a guy who's been waiting twenty years to be told he was in the right place.
He's in the right place. He's been in the right place. He just didn't have the audience until the audience came to him.
What this means for the area.
I asked Ralph what he wanted me to know about the school. He said the heart of it. Not the credits. The heart.
But here's what I'd add — because he's too humble to:
If you live in Monmouth County and you have a kid who wants to act, this is the room. Twelve working artists. 180 students. A sanctuary culture. A be nice or leave policy. A record of placing kids on Broadway stages, network procedurals, and the films and shows your kids are actually watching, for two decades.
The Netflix campus opens at Fort Monmouth in 2027. The first kids who will walk on that lot from this area — some of them already trained at Actors Playground. Some of them are training there right now. Some of them are five years old, sitting in Renee Green's class on a Wednesday afternoon.
Ralph has been running Hollywood East since before there was a name for it. The rest of us just showed up.
What I want to say without saying it weird.
A guy whose students are on Netflix and Broadway sent me a message saying I had vision. Then we talked for forty-five minutes and he spent half of it asking me questions.
That's somebody who's good at his job because he's good at his life. Those are the same person.
If you have a kid, if you know a kid, if you were a kid who got told they couldn't and you still feel the sting — Actors Playground is in Freehold. Tell them Chris sent you. Or don't. They'll be busy enough.