Alternate Title: This Very Day Was Cassius Born

Today (or rather yesterday – Tuesday) was an extremely full day of rehearsals, including a four-hour dress tech in the Playhouse in the evening for both T&C and CoE. The campers thoroughly enjoyed watching each other’s plays – here is Emily mid-collapse at Hector’s death (sorry for spoilers):

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But between rehearsals and mandatory rest time, we had another class taught by RDA Jake Raiter – this time, on PUPPETS!

Jake taught his entire workshop with Peepers, small eyeball puppets that fit over one’s hand:

He first stressed that characters must make eye contact – difficult to do with eyes on one’s hands! – and move their jaws, not their whole upper head, when they talk. Then he demonstrated the “Henson punch” way of articulating speech, and showed the kids how to work in a puppet box!

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As puppet class wrapped up, Jake instructed the campers to make their puppets sing – puppets, he said, are an inherently silly art form, and one thing they do very well is sing. He selected a song everyone would know – “Happy Birthday” – BECAUSE it was the birthday of RDA Marielle! He had all the puppets sing to her and then RDA Joan presented an enormous cake sent by her family.

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Marielle’s birthday came up again after our long dress rehearsal, where Ellie played “22” for lullabies in Marielle’s honour. Then camp conked out for the night – hopefully we will be well-rested for tomorrow’s Macbeth Invited Dress!