Do What You Will: ASC Theatre Camp Talent Show

Karl Dickey and Liam Rowland 

             Once every session, the campers get a chance to showcase their diverse talents to their peers during an ASC Theatre Camp event called “What You Will .” As the name might suggest, the campers can perform whatever they feel personally accomplished at or want to do. What You Will is a break from our standard rehearsal schedule that allows the campers to perform a wide variety of pieces, some quirky, most hilarious, all engaging, to their fellow campers.

            While not every What You Will has MCs, Karl Dickey and Liam Rowland volunteered for the task as part of their talent. Clad in uniform dinner jackets and bowties, sporting sunglasses and fancy hats, this hysterical pair introduced each of the twenty-seven pieces put on during What You Will. Both Karl and Liam are talented musicians, so they frequently introduced their peers in song. For example, before Noël Grisanti and Maggie Doyle performed the famous unpinning scene from Shakespeare’s Othello, Liam and Karl threw out a couple jokes and performed the “Othello Rap” from the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Our MCs flew by the seat of their pants, providing hilarious, often improvised, introductions for their peers.

Hugh Raup "hypnotizes" Counselors into Contortion

            As previously mentioned in this blog, our campers this session are a particularly musical bunch, but it has never been so apparent as at What You Will. Be it performing original songs, covering well known favorites, or mashing up popular songs to create something new, our campers wowed us with their  creative, instrumental, and vocal prowess. In addition to musical abilities, many campers revealed their varied dance abilities. While we saw some magnificent traditional pieces, such as Caroline Cromwell’s ballet, some were refreshingly less conventional. Cyler Winnie did a modern robot dance fluidly, while Elise Ammondson did her own soft shoe/ hard shoe mashup Irish jig take on “Cotton-eye Joe.” Some of our campers decided to doff conventional talents in favor of physical feats. Hugh Raup decided to amaze his fellow campers by doing a series of contortions that culminated in the “hypnotization” of four counselors for a group number.

Carmen Paddock Performs a Monologue

            Some of the scenes that were being performed were original pieces written by our very own campers. Elizabeth Williams, Annalise Kiser, and Rachel Poulter-Martinez each wrote different pieces. Annalise chose to read her own work aloud while Elizabeth and Rachel  had given scenes to their peers and asked them to perform staged readings of them. Both Rachel and Elizabeth acted as directors for their scenes, and took the time before the show to gather props to bring them to life. In performance, the pieces were thoughtful, dramatic, and dark, and they well harnessed the talents of their peers. It was lovely to see this facet of our campers’ talents on display. It was interesting to see the fruits of the directorial positions that some of the campers took.

            The strong group energy that resonates during each camp activity has been remarkable. During many of the different musical pieces, the audience members would often chime in by clapping, snapping, or even stomping to the beat. Always respectful of the onstage performer, they got involved only they were encouraged to, always adding to and not detracting from the piece. This sense of group camaraderie was particularly tangible during Hugh Raup’s performance of “Mariner’s Revenge” by The Decembrists. He sang it with no instrumental accompaniment, so, taking the lead of counselor Dan Stevens, the campers beat out a percussive line to add to the song.

What You Will has consistently been a lovely night where all of the members of camp get together to watch and support each other’s abilities. What You Will is voluntary, so everyone who performed wanted to showcase and share their accomplishments with the camp. It is a beautiful evening of support, humor, creativity, and appreciation, and it demonstrates what a large pool of talent our directors at their disposal to incorporate into our upcoming productions. Though What You Will was a private, camp-only event, our performances of Shakespeare's 1 Henry VI and Much Ado About Nothing as well as Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King premier on Sunday, August 5th for a free and open to the public one day event. Please join us to see more of what our talented campers can do!

 --Madeleine M. Oulevey

They came singing...

Every year the music in ASC Theatre Camp is a treat, but I must say that this session is especially full of strong musicians eager to play and sing together. The campers all came to make theater together, but many of the campers this year came to make music as well. From the first day these campers arrived, already the lounges were full of songs mashed up together, songs they were sharing and learning and teaching to each other. 

In their auditions, they sang together in groups, many of them singing with people they’d only just met, learning a song fresh and new to them all. Emma has already written beautifully about the first workshop with Greg Phelps, but I thought I’d add in a bit from my own experience playing music along with the campers in the workshop. When Greg gave everyone a five minute break, rather than hanging around chatting, a group of the campers started pulling out their instruments and making up a song all on their own, in anticipation of creating a song all together. As the workshop progressed and the instrumentalists and the vocalists worked on different parts of the process, they’d take turns, stopping to listen to each other, and would inevitably freak out about how the music comes together. “That harmony is flippin sweet!” they’d say, or, “Yeah, trumpet!” or just burst out with, “It’s so good!” These adolescents know how to give and take in a creative setting, and by working together, they create an artistic whole much larger than the sum of its parts. 

But lest you think this exuberance and talent for music is only in workshops and free time, please know it comes into the rehearsals as well. Stopping in for a rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing, the whole cast and artistic team for that show gathered together to brainstorm ideas for the various moments of music in that play. Someone suggested that they play “I need a Hero” for the dance, and immediately one Sarah, one of the campers said, “oh, I can play that on my uke, but I don’t have it with me.” Laura, our Dogberry chirped in with “you can borrow mine, I’ve got it with me,” and in no time Sarah performed her rendition of the song, and though I don’t know what choices they will eventually make, that ukulele rendition of the song went straight to the heart of the cast, and everyone applauded her skills. 

The campers do not make all the music of this camp. Several of the counselors have studied music in college, and the lullabies to the campers this session are particularly sweet. Zach, one of the counselors, is a prodigious guitarist (you can see his videos here), and two nights ago instead of regular lullabies he played an original work for the campers before they went to bed.

In addition to all of this, the Heifetz International Music Institute is sharing our campus with us this summer. Tonight some of us will attend a faculty recital of some of the most respected string teachers in the world. I know it will be a unique experience, as campers don’t usually go listen to Dvorak or Brahms when they’re at summer camp, but I am excited for the opportunity, and I know the kids who go will love it. Whatever it is that makes music important to us as people, I know that the love and camaraderie it builds is a big part. There may be more skilled or trained musicians in Staunton this summer, but I think you might be hard pressed to find anyone who loves making music more than the people in this camp.

Music as Human Nature: Workshop with Greg Phelps

Greg Phelps began his Music Workshop with a nearly unanswerable question, “Why is there music?” But after pondering for a minute or two, the ASC Theatre Campers were full of answers for him. Campers began to list purposes for music, suggesting that music is way to express emotions and a way for humans to master the sounds they hear.

The conversation took on a free form, and Greg introduced other questions , such as “What is silence?” which had the campers debating the existence of silence altogether. Session 2 differs from Session 1 in many ways, and the difference in assertiveness and leadership was evident today. These older campers turned the “masterclass” into more of a seminar, where the class began to drive the conversation with their inquiries and inventive ideas. One camper mused that we as humans are both master and servant to noises, in that we have a natural inclination to control and organize these sounds, but also must use them for creation. Another pointed out that not only is music a way to express personal emotions, but it is a way to inspire emotion in others. An example a camper came up with is that in a movie, the soundtrack serves as a cue to the audience for what mood a scene is in.

Greg reinforced all the ideas that the campers brought up, offering support with anecdotes and related information. The general conclusion was that music is tied to the human race’s ability and will to create. Greg explained that “we’re still animals, but we can create. Birds know how to mimic other sounds, but to take ‘part a’ and ‘part q’ and put them together, that’s solely human. Nothing else does that. It sets us apart.”

The campers discovered that another singularly human aspect of music is its communal nature. Music brings people together so they can share a moment of collective emotion, sometimes simply just to have a good time. One camper pointed out that everyone has participated in a loud, rousing chorus of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” at one point or another. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t know all the words or if you’re completely tone deaf: There is something about singing in a large group of people that ties to the human need to belong and be accepted by fellow humans.

As the campers continued to explore these inventive theories for over an hour, Greg finally had to put a halt on Music Philosophy 101 so that the campers could unpack their instruments, warm up their voices, and start composing. Out of sea of black cases came a mandolin, many guitars, a bass, an Irish hand drum, two violins, and a trumpet. The campers received a variety of lyrics from different Shakespeare plays to choose from, and this group selected “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night to set to music. The room divided between singers and instrumentalists. Greg acted as a communicator between the two groups so that their independent work would match up when put together. First, the musicians came up with a basic chord progression which the singers then built a melody around. After establishing the basic structure, the piece blossomed with the addition of harmonies, embellishments, and instrumental solos. The group was lucky to have counselor and music major, Zach Fichter, along with dramaturg and violinist Clara Giebel to assist with the composition. In the end, the campers’ rendition of “O Mistress Mine” sounded professional, thanks to the talent of this group and Greg’s wonderful guidance. ASC Theatre Camp will most likely use the song for their pre-show.

Throughout the entire workshop, the campers had to actively say “yes” to the ideas of their peers in order to make this collaborative process happen. You’ll notice that this is a recurring theme that pops up in just about everything we do at this camp! The song would not have been nearly as complex or interesting without the positive reinforcement that the campers displayed. To emphasize the importance of positivity, Greg asked everyone to put their hands in middle and yell an enthusiastic “YES” to finish off the workshop. As the campers filed out of the room to head off to lunch, each was humming proudly the melody of their newly composed song.

--Emma Lo

Midsummer Day Camp: Monday

My exciting Midsummer Day Camp experience began at 10 AM on Monday morning in Hunt Hall West. The campers were in a large circle on a mat, individually delivering lines from Macbeth that the camp directors had prompted. I learned that this is the camp’s way of “auditioning” the campers—by seeing how big of a choice they could make with the recital of a given line. The first prompt I watched was “My lord, his throat is cut, that I did for him,” which is delivered by Murderer 1 at the beginning of the famous ghostly banquet scene. One by one each camper played the line as “evilly” as possible, as requested by Camp Director Adrian. The young actors brought an imaginative assortment of villainous cackles, murderous hand gestures, and—the crème de la crème—evil British accents to the mat. Clearly this camp’s production of Macbeth will not lack enthusiasm and creativity.

            After a few more rounds of this recital game—which also included a melodramatic plea of Lady Macduff’s, a spell cast by one of the witches, and an enraged challenge to battle from the daring Young Siward—the campers had a brief introductory music lesson with Jeanette. They learned the song “We Are Young” by Fun while practicing projection, articulation, and singing without those pesky diphthongs.

            This musical interlude made way to a deliciously morbid lesson with Sarah Enloe, ASC’s Director of Education. The campers made their way downstairs to Hunt Gallery in their smocks, where they learned about the different types of fake blood used for the stage. Many questions must be answered, Sarah explained, before a type of fake blood can be chosen for a specific moment in an ASC production. For instance, how old is the blood? Has it scabbed over, or been freshly spilt? How does the blood move onstage? Most importantly, how thick is it? Does it need to be washable so costumes will not be ruined? And where does the blood come from? All of these questions, she informed the campers, need to be answered through inferences in Shakespeare’s text.

Sarah and the campers then looked at several moments that refer to blood in Macbeth, and determined together what kind of blood would be preferable for each moment. Some references are purely symbolic or rhetorical, such as in Macbeth’s first soliloquy: “But in these Cases/ We still have judgment here, that we but teach/ Bloody Instructions…” (II.7.481-83). Others, however, required the campers to answer Sarah’s important questions in order to determine which fake blood would be best.

            Sarah then split the large group into pairs, and each pair was given a different moment in the text that calls for fake blood onstage. The pair then made the blood—using an assortment of ingredients such as peanut butter, starch, and red food coloring—that fit the excerpt they received. After applying their fake blood to their hands and arms, each pair explained to the rest of the group which moment in the play they were assigned, what kind of blood they chose to make, and whether or not their execution fit their initial ideas. Sarah’s workshop was a creatively engaging experience for the campers. If anyone had come to camp doubting that Shakespeare could be fun, they did not keep those doubts after this bloody mess. 


-Lee Ann Hoover, Education and Dramaturgy Intern

Midsummer Day Camp - Tuesday

Our second day has started! We began with physical warm ups on the Blackfriars stage. Our campers had a guest teaching artist this morning - ASC actor Allison Glenzer. She lead our aspiring actors in a vocal exercise workshop. Campers warmed up their voices and wiggled their bodies with Linklater technique exercises, and stretched their faces and mouth.  Campers learned good projection techniques so audience members in the back of the theater can hear them.

After vocal exercises, campers walked back to the Mary Baldwin campus for MacBeth rehearsal.  Campers split up into their casts and continued to learn their lines and block their scenes.  By now, campers are familiar with the different parts of a stage and stage directions (including the difference between right and stage right).  Some of our campers even learned basic stage combat! 

Next was music class, taught by Jeanette.  Our campers prepared their singing voices with scales and tongue twisters.  After singing warm ups, campers learned the choruses of the popular songs “We Are Young” and “I Set Fire to the Rain”.  Jeanette also taught campers about rhythm with tambourines and drums, and acting through song.  Campers sang loud and lovely!

- Liz Perash

Moving Freely

            The workshops held at ASC Theatre Camp  aim to instill a wide variety of skills that are applicable to the performance and understanding of early modern text. Denice Mahler’s dance workshop got the campers working actively on their feet and interacting with the performance space and with each other.  Mahler implemented Anne Bogart’s “Viewpoints” method that provides a concrete way for discussing and acting on movement and gesture. The workshop challenged campers' comfort zones and implemented non-verbal communication, the result of which was a good, clean sweat for all involved.

            We were first charged with moving around the space. What was at first a simple task graduated in complexity, adding new challenges. First, we worked with different levels of speed. Sometimes half of the group worked at minimal speed while others raced about them. It was difficult to control one’s own motions while being aware of those of others, especially when the others were racing about them. The next challenge was moving in a certain pattern. We’d either move in a circular pattern or set to a grid. In doing so, the campers discovered new things about the space. During the group discussion, Marianna Moynihan said that being confined to walking on a grid made her realize the grid like pattern on the ceiling of the space, which she used to guide her movement. Many of the campers claimed that they reacted in a similar fashion: taking cues from the space to guide their action.

            At this point, Mahler added music to the mix. The music ranged from dubstep to smooth jazz to upbeat pop. The result was impressive. As Mahler fed us different directions for how to interact with the space, it became apparent that most of the campers lost any inhibitions about movement that they may have had. Keeping with the idea of making some motions bigger and interacting with the space, action was assigned to one body part, and we would explore out ability to translate it to another body part. The general consensus of the group was that we discovered and worked new muscles that we didn’t know we had!

            When working “freely,” patterns began to take shape. Mahler would gently suggest ways to move: using different levels, speeds, mimicking, etc. What was truly wonderful to see, however, was how relationships began to develop on their own. These exercises were non-verbal, but the campers took the initiative and acted out a variety of motions. Some created characters based on an exaggerated motion. Others worked with space, forming shapes around the scene created by another camper. Many mimicked the motion of another camper, and they were able to move around each others' empty space without verbal communication. The energy and emotion during this exercise was thrilling to witness. Each movement that the campers would go through very much retained their own personal character, but the fluidity of action and variation in movement was astonishing.

            After a brief and well-earned water break, we began a new group exercise. Walking in a circle, we were made to jump on the count of three. The goal of this exercise was to land at the same time and as soundlessly as possible. When we had completed this task, we were made to do it again without being prompted by Mahler’s counting. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we were able to all jump and land as a group at the same time without any verbal communication whatsoever.

            Our final exercise for the dance workshop was to create a series of five tableaus, or still images, to present to the group. We divided up into groups of four and picked a fairy tale that the group would then have to guess. These tableaus were silent and still with only actions to hint at what fairy tale it was to the audience. The viewpoints exercises that addressed shape came in handy here, since the campers had to become scenery as well as characters. In one group, we saw campers become a fire, a ship, and a crocodile in their series of images. Despite the fact that the workshop was tiring and intense, the general consensus was that the two hour long workshop flew by. 

Madeleine M. Oulevey

---

Double Dose of Music

We’re still in only our first week of the camps, and already all the campers have gone through two music workshops, with Greg Phelps and Jake Mahler respectively. These two actors work  for the American Shakespeare Center, and both help to organize and perform the music in the shows.

In Greg’s music workshops, he opens by asking, “Why is there music?” and gets the campers to share why they think people make music. Toni suggested that it seems like an imitation of nature, of birds singing, the rhythms of trees and water. “Music is to carry history, to help people remember through generations” said Allegra, another camper. Cam thought it could be to “express yourself” or “to communicate,” and we all agreed that people can be united or divided over music. For its use in theater, music is “infectious” and communicates “unspoken adjectives” which can present the emotional content of the scene or the play.

From this conversation about the philosophy of music, we turned to the elements of music, and discussed what makes up music, exploring questions such as if major or minor keys actually make a song sound sad or happy. Then we read through the text of all the songs in the plays we’re doing in this camp (there are quite a few) and made some discoveries about structure and form and how that might apply to a song, so that in the last section of the workshop we all made up a song together. For Greg’s first workshop we created “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night. With Toni and Emily (one of our counselors) on guitar, Dan on uke, a trio of strings, and many voices singing, we put together a beautiful little song.

In Jake’s music workshop, the class started with a whole lot of questions. What do you think about when you hear the word “music?” When do you listen to music? Do you have a particular song that “you just need to listen to” when you’re feeling a particular way? When? Do you have specific memories associated with a particular song? Can you think of a spot in a movie that you “cannot imagine” without music? All of these questions yielded enthusiastic conversation and helped the campers think about this nebulous thing we call music which surrounds us and fills our lives, but which doesn’t usually engage all of our cognitive energy. Next, Jake showed three different movie clips, each using music quite differently, and he asked the campers what the music was telling us in each of these clips. In scary movies, it’s the music that makes our hair stand on end; in happy movies, the soundtrack is often the reason we know it’s a happy movie just from the opening credits; and in a romantic (or sad) movie, the music can spark our emotional responses in powerful ways.

In the rest of the workshop, we talked about the ways the ASC uses music, complete with performances from Jake and Dan, one of our counselors who just toured with Jake this past year. We made our own playlists of what songs we would do for Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night if we had the option, and then we talked about where songs live in popular culture and how that affects our understanding of them. What would it do to the play if a production used Katy Perry’s “Firework” as the tune and harmony for the fairies’ lullaby in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? We talked about different styles of music and what they each bring to text. Then all the campers were divided into four groups, and each of the groups created their own song using text from Twelfth Night in four assigned styles: Country, Blues, Gospel, and Alternative Indie Punk. The performances of these four little songs were so much fun for everyone. Jake made sure to mention that we should all be excellent audience members, supporting our fellow actors, and the campers really took it to heart, clapping and even singing along on occasion.

So that’s our news from some music workshops. If you’re interested to hear a little of the music we made up Greg’s second workshop here is a bit of the Mariner's song from Gallathea. Many thanks to Madeline for the file!

Rocks, shelves, and sands, and seas, farewell!

Fie! Who would dwell

In such a hell

As is a ship, which drunk does reel,

Taking salt healths from deck to keel.

Up were we swallowed in wet graves,

All soused in waves,

By Neptune's slaves.

What shall we do, being tossd to shore?

Milk some blind tavern, and there roar.

'Tis brave, my boys, to sail on land,

For being well manned,

We can cry "Stand!"

The trade of pursing ne'er shall fail

Until the hangman cries, "Strike sail"!.

Rove, then, no matter whither,

In fair or stormy weather.

And as we live, lets die together.

One hempen caper cuts a feather.

Auditions and Dramaturgy

Hello! This is Clara Giebel, back again for another summer of blogging about the ASC Theatre Camps. We’re only a couple days in, and already we have settled ourselves into Mary Baldwin College campus, climbed hundreds of stairs, laughed, smiled, made new friends, and caught up with friends from the past. Additionally, we have made it through auditions, casting, and our first read-through of the plays, all with much laughter and enthusiasm. 


I love auditions in this camp because they overflow with trust, love, and potential. Monday morning we opened with Symmonie Preston, our new Director of College Prep Programs,  leading the campers to give and receive their trust to each other. Standing in a circle, the campers and all the staff promised to each other, “If you fall I will catch you.” Rather than beginning with aggressiveness or vicious competition, we started with trust and went from there. The audition progressed from trust to love, as the counselors taught all the campers a musical round to the words of Hamlet’s poem,

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt thou the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt I love.

Once they’d learned the song, the campers broke into little groups of three or four, then each group performed the song with their own interpretation. One trio meowed their song instead of singing it. One trio impersonated Charlie’s Angels. One trio made their song into a story of rejected love. Other groups choreographed dance moves or broke into harmony. We heard the same song at least fifteen times, and I don’t think any of us watching had any opportunity to get bored. 

After the song, the campers did a series of movement centered performances based off of some lines of each of the three plays, and finally all the campers performed their ten lines of prepared text. It is such a privilege to be in a room surrounded by young people who are just brimming with enthusiasm for Shakespeare and his language. We are all flying on potential at this point in the camp, imagining the fantastic things that these young people will achieve, readying ourselves for the work ahead to make the ideas come true. 

Before I leave off for today, I wanted to answer some possible queries about the dramaturgy of this camp. The difficulty in explaining “dramaturgy” lies in the abundance of definitions. For an exuberant list of some possible answers to the question, “what is dramaturgy?” you can explore the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America (LMDA) website: http://www.lmda.org/what-dramaturgy-few-possibilities. Usually, a dramaturg assists a production by doing research so that the the actors and directors have a strong foundation in the text and context of the play. For our camps, the dramaturgs gloss (add in the footnotes for) our cut scripts, put together a binder full of pictures and historical backgrounds, provide some literary analysis of the plays, and attend the rehearsals to stay right in the middle of the action. 

That’s all for now, but please keep checking back for more throughout the week. Our regular schedule begins on Tuesday!

Interview with Hugh, Emma, and Finn

Finn had mentioned in a lecture that morning that he had never been to a Shakespeare play before this past weekend, so I asked him at lunch if he would be up for an interview, and as it turned out, I got Emma and Hugh as well. Hugh is a veteran of this camp, but Emma had also never seen a Shakespeare play, and they were both eager to talk.

Me: So Hugh, you’ve been to lots of shows at Blackfriars, right?

Hugh: I’ve been going to the Blackfriars for I don’t know, maybe two or three? Three years.

Me: And what have you seen? What is the best show you’ve seen?

Hugh: [...] My top three would definitely be Tempest, because the crossdressing scene and the Shakespeare rap just blew my mind. But then the other two before that would have to be Titus Andronicus. Just because it was so well done.

Me: What made it well done? What did you like about Titus?

Hugh: Sarah Fallon. And the tasteful use of blood. Not over-blooded, not under-blooded, but just the right amount of blood. And I don’t know, good acting. And there was another one. [...] Taming of the Shrew. Favorite play ever. Loved Petruchio. Ben Curns. Love Ben Curns. So awesome.

Me: [...] So what about you guys? Never been to a Shakespeare play?

Emma: I’d never been to a Shakespeare play before.

Me: […] So what brought you to this camp?

Emma: Well, for the experience! 'Cause it’s completely different from what I’ve been trained to do.

Hugh: What have you been trained to do?

Emma: Always face the audience, never turn your back on the audience, and now, you’ve got audience all the way around you. It’s really, really different from what I’ve learned. Being able to see it all and with the lights on. I’d never even heard of that. [...] The Tempest was the first Shakespeare Play I’d ever seen, and it just absolutely blew my mind, so fantastic. My favorite line of Shakespeare is, “We are such things as dreams are made on,” and it had totally slipped my mind that that was the play it was from, so when he said that line, I totally had a spaz attack in the middle of the audience. It was hilarious.

Hugh: Me and Cam, we were just dying. […] I had heard the “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” speech like so much. I never had to say it, but I have it pretty well memorized because they say it at the end of every day at the [Virginia] Renaissance Faire, which is an awesome closing speech. And I was like “that’s The Tempest!” And I was just making Cam die, because I was just leaning over and whispering the lines. Prospero would say a line and I’d be like “next line.” I’d whisper the line, and then he’d say it, and then I would say a line, and then he would say it, and she was, like, so confused by me, like, “Why do you know what he’s saying!?”

Me: Finn, you’d never seen a Shakespeare play either,

Finn: And it was so drastically different from my views of Shakespeare.

Hugh: Well, this is not normal Shakespeare.

Emma: Yeah, that’s true.

Me: What were you expecting?

Finn: For one thing, I didn’t expect to understand it or follow the plot at all. I thought, “It’s going to be words I don’t know, spoken way too fast.” Because I’ve read Shakespeare, but I’ve always had to read it, to read each line, six or seven times. And I thought I’m not going to be able to do that, and it’s just going to be really fast talking, and not even, or hardly even English, and I’m not going to know it. And then I went there, and for a moment I was totally terrified, and then not only was it understandable, like really comprehensible, it was also surprisingly relatable, it didn’t seem that ancient at all.

Hugh: That’s why we still do Shakespeare.

Finn: It seemed really connected to modern life in a way I didn’t think was actually possible.

Emma: What I absolutely loved about this was that when we went to see the plays, we knew the actors. It makes it so much better, just really, really cool.

Hugh: Ariel, the music guy [Greg Phelps].

Finn: We wrote a song with Ariel!

Emma: And Miriam [Donald] played Miranda.

Me: And you had voice with Alli [Allison Glenzer]?

Emma: Just yesterday.

Hugh: I haven’t yet, I’m looking forward to it.

Emma: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome, she taught me how to vacuum my lungs. Oh. Mygod. It was just amazing.

Me: How do you vacuum your lungs?

Emma: You breathe all of your breath out, and when you think there’s no breath left in you, you keep breathing out. And then you put your hand over your mouth and then your nose, and then you hold it for a very, very long time until you can’t hold it anymore and then you breathe in and you can feel it, and it’s just awesome.

Me: So, it’s to help you breathe deeper?

Emma: It’s to open your lungs, kind of vacuum out everything.

Me: cool.

Emma: I never heard of doing anything like that, and the second she said we’re going to vacuum out your lungs, I was like, "ohmygod I’m so excited!"

[everyone laughs]

Finn: That would not have been my original response.

Hugh: I would not have been excited.

Emma: I just love making a better environment for singing.

[lunch was pretty much finished by this time, and all the campers were dispersing, so Finn summed it up for us]

Finn: So the moral of my story is I was pleasantly surprised.

End of Week One

We’ve finished the first week of camp, a week full to the brim with workshops. Already the campers have had classes in music, stage combat, text analysis, mask and movement, clown, and dance with actors from the ASC and from other theater professionals. To highlight just a couple of these, I’ll share a bit about Greg Phelps’s music class and Jeremy West’s stage combat.

Greg began his class by walking through some elements of music: rhythm and melody, harmony and dynamics, all the components which make it dramatic as its own art and add to the drama of a play. Next the campers analysed some songs in Shakespeare’s canon, suggesting adjectives to describe the different pieces. “Come away, come away death” is pretty hardcore sad, all about unrequited love and wanting to die because of it, whereas “Oh Mistress Mine, Where are you Roaming?", a song concerned with the shortness of life and the sweetness of love, has a gentler melancholy. Before long the campers used these ideas to work together and write their own song of “Under the Greenwood Tree.” Guitars, ukuleles, violin, melodica, Irish drum and beatboxing combined to make a many-layered song, one they could all be proud of. Throughout the process, Greg emphasized the power of “yes.” When people work together creatively, disagreement stops progress, so whenever there were two different ideas on the table, almost every time we found a way to incorporate both ideas into the song, using every person’s creativity to the utmost.

Stage Combat is probably one of the subjects that campers get most excited about learning, and that parents are least excited about their children trying out. In Jeremy West’s class, there was no end of precaution in the process, because safety is so crucial to the performance of any sort of effective combat. The campers learned several different punches and slaps, where each camper’s hands do not even touch their scene partner, but the two work together to “sell” the action and to make it look convincing to the audience. After slaps and punches, they went on to hairpulls and drags, again actions that look terrifying, but are incredible to watch when you know that the actor who looks as though he is the victim is actually the one in control of what’s happening in each scene. Because of an odd number of participants, Rebecca Speas (one of the counselors) was working with one of the campers, and in the scene they were creating, Speas was ripping one camper around by his hair yelling, “Learn your lines! Learn your lines!” to which he frantically yelled in reply, “I will, I promise!” Two minutes later, they laughed and switched roles, this time with the camper yelling, “I’ve learned them. There are no more!”

Other parts of the class included lots of practice in how to fall safely, and how to do a sitting, a standing, and a jumping role, giving all of the campers all the tools they need to act responsibly and safely onstage.

Besides the workshops, and, of course, rehearsals, Dr. Paul Menzer, the director of the MLitt/MFA program in Shakespeare and Performance, came to lecture about Shakespeare and text. He brought in an Arden Complete works of Shakespeare in a large heavy volume, a laptop, a smartphone, and a flashdrive, and made the point that they are all the Complete works of Shakespeare. Each one is a piece of technology used for conveying information, just vessels for their contents. But here is the paradox: despite containing all the same words, the vessel does make a difference. Whatever we might say, the medium changes the message.

Armed with this mindset, Menzer lead us to explore how books and papers and inks and handwriting and printing and the whole culture of text were different then than they are today. How do theses differences change the way we understand Shakespeare, and what might that mean for future generations, when books are no longer the primary means of accessing literature?

Menzer also touched on how much individual characters in the plays say about themselves and the characters around them by their words, by the way they are addressed, or by how they address others. Ophelia is constantly in a lower status than the characters around her. She has no nurse or handmaid, the people she talks with while sane are the Prince, her father, and her older brother, all of whom are telling her what to do. Also interesting is that when she goes mad and drowns, Ophelia is the only character in all of Shakespeare’s canon who reportedly drowns and does not miraculously return. Menzer asserts that it is possible that Viola, a character who beginsTwelfth Night nearly drowned, and who has a similar situation to Ophelia, could be Shakespeare’s second go, second take, second life for Ophelia. It was a fascinating lecture, and got the kids all thinking.

Other stuff happening at camp so far?
*Many trips to Split Banana for gelato.
*Campers memorizing their lines in their rooms, in the shade outside, in the laundry room, in the library and in any number of crazy accents.
*Conversations about everything they’re learning.
*Self motivated rehearsals for the upcoming talent show, “What You Will.”
*Music is everywhere. Campers picking things out on a piano or a new uke or just singing while they walk. And the counselors sing lullabies to the campers to put them to sleep.

More about the weekend activities coming soon!