Weekend and Monday workshop

On Friday evening, the campers went to their first show at the Blackfriars Playhouse, the opening night of The Tempest. Everyone was dressed for the occasion, and it was great fun to see the campers all cleaned up. After a week of yoga pants, running shorts and T-shirts, here they were, sporting ties and hats, heels, summer dresses, scarves, and suspenders. Their enthusiasm infected the whole playhouse. Sometimes this energy showed itself in silent rapt attention, sometimes in applause after a particularly impressive scene, and at intermission their energy broke into dancing to the actors’ music as they waited in line for the snack cart. I had hoped to go with the campers to The Importance of Being Earnest the following evening, but the house, including standing room, was completely sold out, so I had to take it on good report that everyone had a good time.

The weekends at ASCTC feature a lot of much-appreciated time out of doors. During the weekdays, the campers are free to spend time outside during their siesta after lunch, either on the Stuart Hall grounds or walking in pairs around downtown Staunton. Sometimes in rehearsal a few campers will head outside with an assistant director, working on another scene or running lines while the director works on a different scene, but otherwise most of the workshops, lectures, and rehearsals are held indoors. On Saturday, however, all the campers went to Gypsy Hill Park for a picnic lunch, and on Sunday, everyone headed to Lake Lofton for a day of cookouts and sunshine and swimming -- exactly what they needed after a week full of working their minds.

Monday morning opened with other pair of workshops, one in Voice with Allison Glenzer and another in Alexander Technique with Jeremiah Davis and his teacher, Daria Okugawa. She describes Alexander Technique as an endless study, like learning to play a musical instrument, but says that even a few pointers in a 2-hour workshop will give you enough to start thinking and working. Much of the morning was spend simply identifying areas of stress and tension in our bodies and in our lives and realizing that awareness of these areas will allow us to change our habits, so we can expend less energy on simple actions like walking or sitting or standing and be more focused on whatever task we are hoping to perform.

This was my first experience with any sort of Alexander workshop, and though I usually sit and take notes on the workshops, Jeremiah encouraged me to join in, saying that I’d learn a great deal more by doing it, rather than by just looking at the campers work. The most amazing thing for me was watching the way that the campers' bodies changed just by having Okugawa shift their head or shoulders so that their spine was erect and not curved or slumped to one side. Suddenly the teenagers I had become used to seeing as slumped, tired, or lacking physical confident turned into beings of statuesque beauty and elegance. Every inch of their bodies became suddenly engaged and alive in a matter of seconds. The rest of the campers were gasping at the change, which wasn’t necessarily one they could hold onto, as all of them had build some pretty strong habits. At least now they knew what they were capable of, had had a glimpse of it, and they can take that shimmer into the way they carry themselves in the world.

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.