For Campers, For Parents, Theatre Camp

Written by

Eli Dietrich

[ENTER CAMPERS]

Today’s Date: 6/26/23

Show Title: JULIUS CAESAR

Director: Natasia Reinhardt

Staff Crew: Assistant Directors: Cole Metz and Liv Meredith. Dramaturg: Eli Dietrich. Stage Manager: Lillian Malone.

 

What we did

Today, the campers began their read-through of Julius Caesar. Beginning with our wonderful director Natasia Reinhardt telling us the general vibe of the play. We ran through half the play, stopping on Caesar’s death. After a quick bathroom break, we finished reading the play though. After our break, we took a short time to get all the pronunciations of each name down (Romans liked to be weird with names). Then, we went through the play from the beginning and extracted the objectives of each character, up to Act 2 Scene 4. This went by asking each camper “what they want” from each scene (a task harder than it may seem).

 

Quick and Quotable

  • From the play Everyone laughed at the name “Publius” because our wonderful director Natasia made the executive decision that his name is pronounced, “Poo-blius”.
  • From the director Natasia wants to highlight the varying types of relationships in the play, this includes queer relationships. 
  • From the cast Today, the cast was mostly interested in figuring out what is funny. Nobody came into Julius Caesar expecting a comedy. The consensus is that the play is a mix of “Mean Girls” and political satire. 

 

Production Insights 

The show is going to be extremely movement based, with many scenes of intense noise and choreography. Because of this, we are hoping to make a safe environment in the rehearsal space so that when campers do need to shout and be a vicious mob, they will feel safe while doing it. Camp is a place of radical acceptance, and rehearsal allowed us to view these characters through every identity they could possibly inhabit. Natasia’s Rome is a place where morals are a grey area, and being a hero is an impossibility. While most productions of the show take the politics at face value, our show will satirically comment on all types of issues through the mouthpiece of comedy. The campers seemed surprised but excited to get started on such an inventive and impressive expression of how changeable and universal Shakespeare is.

Eli Dietrich

Eli is the dramaturgy mentor for Julius Caesar. In his senior year of college at UNC-Chapel Hill, Eli's studies have been focused solely on early modern European drama, and he is going to graduate next spring with a major in English and two minors in early modern history and drama. His goal is to eventually become a professor of English and spread the wonders of the period to all. It is exciting to be working on this show, and he hopes that those who keep up to date with this wonderful blog will enjoy the connection and core experiences being made at rehearsal. It is the job of every actor in this show to find themselves within the lines of Shakespeare, and the hope is that parents and friends reading along will also end up being touched by the lines and ideas which Julius Caesar will bring up.