WELCOME TO NERD CAMP!
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Thirty-one campers arrived today and moved into their dorms, which they identified by the appropriately nerdy Doric or Ionic columns used as door signs. They received the Camp Rules from our intrepid camp leader Lia Wallace (tl;dr: don’t wander off, be nice to each other, check your Slack!) and then began the longest journey of their lives: up The Mary Baldwin Hill, in temperature measured at one billion degrees. You best believe we’re staying hydrated up in here!
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Waiting at the top of the hill was the Deming rehearsal space, where Troilus and Cressida and The Comedy of Errors will both spend some time during these three weeks. We learned about each other, including names and at least one excellent fact. It turns out that some campers can sing really high; some can sing really low; some enjoy fibre arts like sewing and crocheting; and some excel at dialects – all skills liable to be mined in the upcoming shows (you have been warned!)
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Afterwards, camp staff modelled part of tomorrow’s audition process – The Tableaustry, where moving pictures, text, and constraints like “use your elbows!” make up a beautiful tapestry of tableaux (tableau of tapestries?) in less than 10 minutes. Campers will get a chance to do this very exercise tomorrow with text from one of the two plays on the table.
Another trip through one billion degree weather led to the blessedly air-conditioned Grafton Library, where Lia introduced our camp group chat-slash-callboard, Slack, and the online yoga program we will be following every morning – today’s video, appropriately enough, was “Day Zero” of the program. Campers then lined up and were assigned a count-off number for quick role-call purposes, and then chose TOP SECRET names out of a hat for the TOP SECRET sonnet project – more on that at a later date!
After our first dinner together – salad, tacos, and fried chicken were popular choices – it was time for……..
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THE PLAYHOUSE!
Campers had a tour of the beautiful facility, a break, and a chance to practice “slating” (giving your name and identifying your monologue), round-robin style. This led into the final activity of the evening, a one-hour monologue workshop where campers practices their audition pieces for a Resident Directing Assistant and receives feedback.
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To kick off our nightly tradition of Lullabies, interns sang a version of the Phineas and Ferb theme song, specially adapted for camp. Now it’s lights out for campers (and for this blog post writer) – we’ll be back with more Camp Life Updates tomorrow!