The Camp Arc: Camp #2, Pt. 1
Happy Wednesday evening, my good audience member! I have shifted gears from Mesa to Tempe as I am now involved in two dino-mite camps at Childsplay!
Driving up to Childsplay, I was lost at first. I was looking for either a small building or a theater reminiscent space. I was not expecting to pull up to what looked like a whole elementary school campus. It’s truly magnificent; a whole campus dedicated to theater classes and arts-based engagement! (UPDATE: I was told that Childsplay’s building actually used to be an old elementary school!)
In the first half of my day, I intern at Dino Drama: the camp for ages 4-6. I haven’t worked with strictly this age group before, so I was curious to see how performing would be taught for very little kids. Turns out, it’s all about building the imagination! Over the past few days, we’ve been doing tons of dinosaur roleplay. I was quickly reminded that kids are obsessed with dinosaurs (hey, I was too from 4-6), so getting into character is never a challenge for them. Me personally, I’ve chosen to be a pterodactyl Tuesday and an apatosaurus Wednesday. As dinosaurs we’ve been going many places from the park to a treehouse to Candyland! My favorite place we’ve visited as dinosaurs is the Dinosaur Stomp based on a book that we all read together. It’s a big dance party like homecoming or prom but for prehistoric friends. Knowing I have to miss my own prom, boogying it down at the Dinosaur Stomp definitely made up for it.
A variety of crafts have been aiding the budding of the camper’s imaginations. Creating dinosaur hats, drawing where the dinosaurs lived, and making clothespins puppets have allowed the kids to get more Cretaceous-crazy. There’s also just several moments where the kids are just allowed to free-play. It’s actually how we always start our day! Overall, the strategy for this camp and introducing theater to this age group seems to be letting their energy run free and letting them share their stories! It really encourages them to do their absolute best.
After a well-loved lunch break, I shift gears to the marathon camp: Jurassicland. A marathon camp is for ages 8-15 and consists of learning a jukebox musical written by one of the Childsplay workers in one week. For this camp specifically, the campers are all characters from the well-loved Alice in Wonderland. They are transported back to Wonderland with Alice’s sister Ella to stop the Queen of Hearts from turning her subjects into dinosaurs, thus creating Jurassicland.
This model does seem similar to EVCT’s camp from last week, but there are quite a few differences. For one, the show here is already fully written. It’s a longer show with more solos and more dialogue in between the songs than Spookytown. The actors also don’t get much separate game time; it’s all about ploughing through this very fun show! In summary, it runs more like a normal show intensive does.
I was asked by the camp’s teachers if I wanted to choreograph a number, so I took on the challenge. I had not really choreographed since “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” in Annie Kids, so I was excited to see what I could come up with. This was also a challenge for me as admittedly, even though I love theater, I am not the best dancer.
For my number, I just knew I had to choose “Mr. Cellophane” from Chicago; it’s such a hilarious, jazzy song that I’ve loved. This song is about a man lamenting about how he feels invisible in the world in the original show. When it comes to Jurassicland though, it’s been transformed into a fun ditty by the Cheshire Cat bragging about his abilities to turn invisible. Here, I faced another challenge as the Cat and ensemble only had their heads sticking out of the curtain. I had to create choreography that would look dynamic with a limited amount of the body to work with. I used a lot of head rolls, shakes, and turns to compensate for this. Eventually, I created something and taught it to them, and they picked it up pretty well!
The crafting also did not stop here. My counselor buddy and I were given the task of making dinosaur masks for when the creatures of Wonderland get transformed, and boy, were we having a blast. I tried to make all my masks distinct from each other (they are pictured below). The actors seemed to love them as well as they tried them on today! I call this a sauropod success.
On Friday, the campers from both camps will show off what they learned this week to their parents during “Sharing Time”! I’m as excited for this as I am to share with you guys the final results of these classes!
Take a few days until next post.
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