The camp themes of Musical Debut, Fairytales: Happily Ever After, Acting Out: The Basics, and Heroes vs. Villains: Minions & Henchman don't necessarily scream "comedy," but this week's camps have been a laugh riot! Honorable Mention: Camp Comedy, because what else would you expect from a camp with that title?
Our 2-week Musical Debut camp for 3rd-5th graders kicked off this week with 11 campers learning songs, creating characters, and contextualizing it all within their script, and that's just week one! They also worked on the basic actor tools of voice, body and imagination, and what an imagination... There were laughs a minute just learning new words to describe their characters, like "zealous" ("is that like jealous but with a 'z'?) We can't wait to see how these hilarious characters take to the stage by the end of next week.
Creative Drama campers this week have been a little villainous...and a little heroic, but definitely silly! They've been using these themes to discover their actors' tools of voice, body, and imagination in fun and sometimes unexpected ways (can you say robot dinosaurs?). Despite being heroes vs. villains, the campers have had a blast making new friends, collaborating on acting games & art project, and working together as a team! It'll all come together tomorrow for their final sharing for families & friends.
Happily Ever After sounds sweet, right? Well, sweet and hilarious this week at ETC Beginnings! Activities have included learning some classic fairytales, and their humorous alternative versions, doing an obstacle course as different types of animals, and writing their own story based on themes and ideas from the stories they've learned (it might involve giraffes...). All this while having time to make some incredible and unique art projects (let's just say you might be jealous you didn't get to do it).
Our second week of camps at Falls Church is Acting Out: The Basics, but you know nothing stays basic for long with a bunch of excited and imaginative campers! Between improvisation & ensemble-building games and crafting accessories for their original characters, these campers have been laughing, creating, and of course, learning. Everybody seems most excited about the original scenes they've written, and they can't wait to perform them on Friday for family & friends.
And there's Camp Comedy & Camp Comedy Studios... Of course they're uproarious, it's called Camp Comedy for a reason! So far in week 1, Teen filmmakers in Camp Comedy studios have been learning the basics of film production as they work collaboratively to write, direct, shoot, light, perform in, & eventually edit their original black and white silent comedies in the style of the original comedy movie greats, like Chaplin & Keaton.
To learn how to write and direct comedy, they've also been engaged in improvisation and other acting exercises. Meanwhile, the youth campers at Camp Comedy have been learning improvisation as well as "what makes something funny?" leading to learning & understanding the rules of comedy. Camp Comedy youth have also been learning the basics of clowning, and sketch writing and will learn slapstick & stage combat later this week!
This is one of our 2 busiest weeks of the entire summer and I'm sure you can see why! We still have 5 more weeks of camp, so there's plenty more to come... stay tuned.
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