The past two days have been packed at ASCTC. Yesterday was all rehearsal, all day. Rehearsal in the morning, rehearsal in the evening, and a brief break in the middle to go to the ASC and watch – guess what? – a rehearsal!
The ASC was rehearsing a large swath of The Importance of Being Earnest yesterday, and the campers got to go and observe for an hour. To facilitate their observational and learning skills, camp staff built them a bingo card of things they were likely to see at rehearsal – a few of those cards shown here.
(Fortunately, camp staff was perspicacious enough to give them things that actually happened – a moment where an actor took a sip of water precipitated a flurry of bingos, as did the stage manager’s “take ten, everybody” toward the end of our observing block).
~
Then today, besides rehearsal, the cast of Troilus and Cressida had voice class with Summer England (whom, to their delight, they realised they had seen on stage yesterday as Gwendolyn Fairfax). In the workshop they learned how to sit, breathe, and stage whisper for maximum vocal health and clear storytelling.
In one exercise, Summer had camper Audri give a monologue to a “baby Greek”, and asked if the other campers found her work “clear” or “unclear”.
~
During this slot, camp director Lia Wallace took headshots of the Comedy of Errors campers in the dorm courtyard, to be used in the programme for the upcoming shows.
When not being “shot”, CoErs worked studiously on their lines for upcoming performances.
~
Then the whole camp gathered for showcase music rehearsal with RDA Joan Raube-Wilson, where they practiced the camp song.
Several campers are playing their own or loaned musical instruments for this song, including some guitarists, some ukulelists, and a banjolele player!
~
Finally after dinner campers were invited to participate in some low pressure, mostly RDA-led activities: a game of Body, Body, for instance – like Mafia but with running – took up a lot of the second and third floors. At one point, twin campers accused each other of being the killer, leading to an “evil twin” incident! When someone, or someones, won, they were given the option of going downstairs to RDA Marielle and, honest to God, giving her a haircut.
~
Meanwhile, many campers made friendship bracelets with RDAs Marielle and Sam on the first floor – some of the friendship bracelets tied into the plots of the plays the campers are working on, while others expressed sentiments about identity and friendship.
~
Finally, some campers and RDA Austen set up in the second floor lounge with a slew of paper, a normal amount of pencils, and some dice, and built characters for a possible future Shakespeare DnD session from the book “Exit, Pursued by an Owl Bear”. (And talked about Star Trek and gender in Shakespeare plays. You know. Nerd stuff.)
~
At lullabies tonight, which was delayed because sometimes RDAs don’t want to leave their activities (cough cough Austen), RDA and music captain Joan sang a beautiful bittersweet song and accompanied herself on the guitar. Tomorrow we look forward to – you guessed it! – more rehearsal (casts will be swapping rehearsal spaces, which is a relief to some and an exciting challenge to others), as well as CLOWN CLASS AAAAAAAA 