FIRST FRIDAY OF CAMP!

 9 July 21

DRAMA CAMP

It's hard to believe we've already completed the first week of camp!! WOWZER!

Yesterday marked the first field trip. We began today telling a story one word at a time to get everyone caught up. It appears that yesterday was filled with fun, bowling, laser tag, claw machines, candy, and pizza! Also, prizes were won!!

After that, we journaled about an imaginary character who lives at Main Event. We then shared our creation simply by conveying it in the journal one at a time to the group. After that, we had 30 seconds each to tell the beginning, middle, and end of the story. But we could only speak in gibberish. 

This took us straight to lunch where we enjoyed food donated to us by Joe Valentino at Sip at C Street Flats! It was good stuff and they knew to mix up all of the breads so we had a lot of choices.

At the beginning of our second half of Drama Club we went outside with the 18' parachute and worked on stage directions and trust. Then we had a little free play in the sprinkler to cool down.

Miss Amy leaves us for two weeks. We'll miss her and we welcome Miss Jess next week!

One thing that could have gone better was to have Miss Deb let us know we would need TOWELS! 

Miss Robin helped some of us dry off with paper towels and we made it work. Some days when we work outside we may just end up in the water to cool down.

 So, it's probably a good idea just to have a swimsuit and towel in case. Unless it's raining. 

After we readjusted from that, we reviewed some of the things we have learned this week. 

And we have a new word find too! 

We ended the day once again playing our favorite game, Freeze Tag! Miss Amy led this time because she'll be in Orlando over the next two weeks. We had to do scenes with one person high and one person low. We had to sing them. And, it was fun!

All in all, this week was about getting a general understanding of theatre. This meant exploring the live aspect of things and trying to lay down our phones and all two-dimensional media. It's tricky. But, we discovered that movement always upstages sound. So, if someone is speaking and another person is doing prop work with their hands, our eyes will always be drawn to the movement over the sound. As a cast, as a team, we are learning to hone our sense of focus. We are learning to GIVE focus to our scene mates. Mostly, we are learning to BE the audience we'd like to perform in front of. We also have word finds to explore if we want to google terms on our own time while we are on our phones and tablets.

Miss Carol's rule is that all electronic devices must be on the back table while activities are going on. And they may be used on breaks. Miss Deb says we have an invisible locker system under the back table. That's where we put all of our bags and belongings now. Except for drinks! We put those up high so they don't get kicked over. This clears the big floor and brings the proper respect to Bernadettes House. Also, no one trips over and falls down.

Next week we will start treating our bodies as instruments! We'll be doing more warm-ups. Today we learned where the tops of our spines are and how to do gentle head rolls. Next week we'll play around with tongue twisters and vocal as well as physical warm-ups. We'll also keep exploring levels (loud, medium, soft, high, medium. low) and how to focus on one person talking at a time. And, as usual, games games games!

We are now experts at stage directions. So ask us to stand center stage, upstage, or downstage-right or left. As long as we know where the pretend audience is, we can take the direction! We also now know how to take stage manager call times. So, if you say, "15 minutes to car!" (meaning it's 15 minutes before the car leaves" We know to respond "Thank you 15" and we have gotten used to these call times happening every 5 minutes. 

Next week we will have a special guest on Wednesday at 1. Her name is Mallory Shear and she is one of the fight choreographers Venus uses. She'll bring some wooden dowel rods and spend an hour teaching us how to sword fight with them! We have to make sure there are no sandals on our feet for that. We'll need to wear shoes and socks at 1pm on Wednesday (and hope it doesn't rain!). 

We have learned this week that for every second of dangerous physical work on stage or film there is A LOT of rehearsal that goes into that: one HOUR rehearsal for every SECOND of dangerous stage time. Fight rehearsals are created by a fight choreographer (like a dance choreographer) and overseen by a fight coach every day (for safety!). For one second of dangerous work, one HOUR of careful rehearsal must be logged in. Real people are so different than anime characters(!).

Also, next week the field trip will happen on Friday instead of Thursday. And we are very pleased that it looks like Ledo's pizza will donate a large cheese pizza for our lunch on Thursday (as long as Miss Deb remembers to remind them)!

Have an awesome WEEKEND! We will see you at Drama Club on Monday.

MISS CAROLS CORNER

From early morning session on learning to set a table, table manners, and social behaviors, to theater and drama, and outside water play with Venus! Our girls were very busy today! Then free lunch donated today by SIP, Happy Birthday time with Siamora, Girl time in the LMD lounge, then the dreaded SLIME! What a day! An exhausting but fun day and the end of week one of Bernadette’s House and Venus Summer Drama Club! BH is keeping our youth safe!

See you all next week! Have a great weekend!

Follow the blog link for more on this weeks camp fun.

CAMPER OF THE WEEK:  Emmaline

Wednesday afternoon crafting with Ms. Andie-that's where campers made signs!

This morning's crafts included making SLIME!

This week contained Siomara's BIRTHDAY! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!