Alright, Campers! (*Surprised Pikachu Face*)
What is this feeling, so sudden and new? It could be my excitement since my shadowing of spring break camps starts tomorrow!
Over the next two weeks, I will be going to East Valley Children’s Theater and Childsplay respectively to intern at their facilities.
I briefly touched on EVCT’s camp in a previous blog, and that’s the one I will be starting with. We decided that the basic plot is that a spooky town is split on what to make the motto for their new welcome sign. The two factions are one that sticks to traditional scares and one that is more modern and sci-fi savvy.
The songs we ended up choosing are “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, “Ways to be Wicked” from Descendants, “That Beautiful Sound” from Beetlejuice, and “When You’re an Addams” from The Addams Family. Oh wait, and of course a spooky camp isn’t completed without a number from the recent hit Wicked! We’ve chosen to indeed go with “What Is This Feeling?” as a group number, and this song was key in creating the conflict plot for the show! Side note: who still can’t stop thinking about Wicked? Is it just me? If you have a favorite song, please drop it in the comments. This may be unpopular as a favorite, but mine is “Dancing Through Life”; it’s too catchy. I indeed do hope to be dancing creating this musical with our campers!
The week after, I will become an official intern at Childsplay where the system is quite different. I talked with Brianna Fallon who is the intern coordinator at Childsplay and my director from Narnia: The Musical last winter. It’s super neat; she described Childsplay’s internship program as like a professional training course for theater education! Brianna described how this is important as it provides a window for those who want to become educators but do not have the money for college. It makes me all the more thrilled to take part of this program; I can’t wait to see what teaching skills I’ll pick up!
The themes for these camps are fascinating too; they’re not like your usual general theater themes. Would you ever think of a performing arts camp centered around dinosaurs? Ok, how about around Pokémon?
Yep, I was surprised too, but it was definitely good surprise. I remembered that the truth is theater can cover about anything! The camps will teach different theater skills and techniques while taking inspiration from the themes of each course. Instead of a formal performance like EVCT, the final product of each course here is a showcase of the various techniques learned throughout the week. I cannot wait to be both a student and mentor here and work with these exciting subjects!
Here’s some links to the camps if you’re more curious about any information (UPDATE: these links are now outdated, but you can check out other courses of similar style).
https://www.hisawyer.com/east-valley-childrens-theatre/schedules/activity-set/1262578
https://www.childsplayaz.org/springclasses
That’s a brief overview of what I’ll be up to! I’ll definitely give more specifics on the process once I get into the flow of things! I can’t wait to see what knowledge I’ll pick up on children’s theater to assist me for when I write my own musical!
Take a few days till next post.
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