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