Who we are
Impact Performing Arts is a premier youth performing arts organization dedicated to inspiring confidence, creativity, and connection through high-quality theatre education. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Impact exists to empower young people through the transformative power of the performing arts. Helping students to discover their voice, develop their talent, and grow into confident, compassionate well-rounded individuals.
With more than 30 years of proven excellence, Impact offers professional-level training in musical theatre, acting, voice, and dance for children, teens and adults of all experience levels. From a child’s very first step onto the stage to full-scale musical productions, Impact provides a nurturing, inclusive environment where every student is encouraged to shine.
A Comprehensive Theatre Experience
At Impact, we believe theatre education is about far more than performance. Our programs are designed to build life skills that last well beyond the stage. These skills foster self-confidence, teamwork, public speaking, empathy, discipline, and creativity. Students learn to collaborate, take risks, support one another, and celebrate growth both individually and as an ensemble.
Each program is led by experienced, passionate teaching artists who bring professionalism, warmth, and real-world industry knowledge into the classroom.
Our offerings include:
Full musical theatre productions
Acting, voice, and dance classes
Summer Musical Theatre Camps
Private lessons and small-group training
Preschool and early childhood theatre programs
And more…
Our Staff
John Fanelli
Founder & Trailblazer
In 2006, John founded Lighthouse Youth Theatre & Education, Inc., a nonprofit organization that quickly became the benchmark for educational theatre in Westchester County and the surrounding region. Under his leadership, Lighthouse set a new standard for youth theatre training and production quality. Nearly fifteen years later, John considers the success of his alumni, now studying and working across the professional theatre world, as one of his greatest achievements.
John has also held key leadership roles with the Westchester Broadway Theatre, where he founded and led the Young Artists program and later co-created The Family Theatre Company. That initiative paired young performers with Broadway professionals in family-friendly productions and he went on to Direct and produce Sold out 10-week runs of In The Heights, Ragtime and Peter Pan, just to name a few.
In 2013, John led a successful capital campaign to build Standing Ovation Studios, a state-of-the-art musical theatre complex. The facility includes multiple dance studios, acting and lecture spaces, private instruction rooms, a fully equipped music production studio, and community spaces designed to support both students and families.
Early Career & Training
John began his professional journey in San Diego as Associate Artistic Director of the Metropolitan Educational Theatre Network, working under acclaimed international children’s theatre director Alex H. Urban. Together, they helped establish theatre programs across California and later expanded internationally, co-founding the Auckland Musical Children’s Theatre in New Zealand—introducing thousands of young people to musical theatre and leaving a legacy that continues today.
Leadership & Program Building
From 2022 to 2024, John served as Artistic Director for Building Kidz Worldwide, a national and international preschool education franchise with more than 70 schools. In this role, he completely reimagined the organization’s theatre curriculum, designed and implemented a comprehensive teacher-training system, and restructured billing and deployment models for educational services. His work transformed an underperforming program into one of the company’s strongest and most positive revenue streams. John traveled extensively to franchise locations, trained teaching artists nationwide, and established a regional leadership structure to support long-term growth.
John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from the University of California, San Diego.
John J. Fanelli is an Artistic Director, educator, and program builder with more than two decades of experience shaping innovative performing arts programs for students of all ages, from preschoolers discovering the joy of storytelling to young artists preparing for professional careers.
Known for his ability to build sustainable arts organizations and empower both educators and students, John brings a unique blend of artistic vision, leadership, and practical execution. He is a motivating leader with a proven track record of guiding projects from concept to completion, while fostering environments where creativity, discipline, and individuality thrive.
Over the course of his career, John has personally taught more than 15,000 students and created programs that have reached over 100,000 young people. His students have gone on to attend nearly every major musical theatre university in the United States and abroad, as well as to build professional careers as actors, musicians, writers, producers, directors, and educators. At the heart of his work is a simple but powerful mission: to create artists and lifelong lovers of the arts, by meeting students where they are and helping them discover who they can become.
Founder/Artistic Director
Jackson Fanelli
Teaching Artist
Jackson is a highly experienced scholar of the arts who has studied all elements of theater from acting to writing to lighting design. Jackson believes strongly in the social function of the arts not only as a way to entertain but to broaden perspectives and promote empathy.
On his YouTube channel, Jackson discusses the importance of the arts and breaks down techniques of storytelling through analyzing film and television shows. His weekly uploads reach thousands of viewers each week. Jackson’s favorite childhood cartoon, SpongeBob SquarePants, is often the subject of his videos. Jackson thinks that even something as silly as a family cartoon is a place for deep discussion and important lessons.
As Jackson continues his career in the arts, he hopes to one day write and produce a series of his own and put his philosophies about the arts to the test. No matter where Jackson ends up in his career, one of his primary interests is to nurture the development of young people in the arts which is why he was interested in being apart of Impact Performing Arts.
Early Career and Training
Jackson began acting as young as 4 years old but started to take the arts much more seriously around age 12 when he performed in his first professional production, Seussical, at the Westchester Broadway Theatre. Despite being a tween at the time, Jackson was placed in the adult ensemble rather than the youth group. It was the first time in his life he felt trusted with real responsibility.
After that, Jackson began participating much more at Lighthouse Youth Theatre under his dad, John Fanelli’s (yes, the very same one) guidance. For the rest of high school Jackson took acting classes, voice lessons and participated in both musical theatre and plays. It was also around this time Jackson started to feel a deep appreciation for the medium of television and took up writing. Jackson also took a great interest in backstage work from building and panting sets to lighting design.
From 2016-2018 Jackson attended Manhattanville College’s Dance and Theater program. There, he learned many acting techniques and trained his craft but what Jackson was most drawn to during this time was the study of Shakespeare.
Professional and Teaching Career
In 2019, Jackson started teaching youth theatre at Lighthouse Youth Theatre and began developing the skills required to teach children of all ages. It was around this time that Jackson switched majors from Theatre to Screenwriting.
In 2022 Jackson moved to California to see what the west coast film and television industry was like. While on the west coast Jackson was cast in a commercial, a few short films and did some background work in feature films. It was also in 2022 that Jackson met his now fiancée, Em. He also picked up a new skill, photography, and is now capable of photographing shows and taking high quality headshots.
Also in 2022 (an eventful year for him) Jackson graduated with a Master’s degree in creative writing from Full Sail University. Jackson was the valedictorian of his graduating class.
While in California Jackson found the most success as a YouTube content creator. He created his first channel in the late Summer of 2023 which focused on discussing video games. In the Fall of 2024 Jackson started another YouTube channel that focused on analyzing movies and television shows. While Jackson still uploads to the gaming focused channel, it was clear that the media analysis channel had found a strong core audience as starting from September of 2025 the channel began ballooning in popularity with each uploading getting between 10,000 to 30,000 viewers with some particularly popular videos reaching numbers well above 100,000.
As of today, Jackson has moved back to the east coast and has built out a home studio in a spare bedroom in his home. At the age of 27, Jackson feels like he has achieved a lot but knows that there is still so much more to go.
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