If you believe in magic, you should work in Children’s Theatre (Part One)

Making a puppet camel and it’s hump along with over-coming the humps and bumps of going the extra mile.

What happens at Theatre Camp?

This past summer, I worked at an awesome camp that offers an all round theatre experience to kids and teens. Kids participate in various classes: acting, singing, dance and tech (meaning stagecraft/design and behind the scenes work). They also work on a full scale production that is mounted for family and friends to enjoy at the end of the camp.

The first few days are used to expose the campers to different classes and elements of theatre. It is also an opportunity for instructors to get to know the kids and get a sense of their interests and strengths, ultimately it helps with casting. After the first 3 days, the kids audition with sides (selected scenes) and a chance to sing 8 bars from an assigned song or a song of their choice. Then the dreaded casting process takes place dividing the kids into ‘focus groups’. In essence, kids are cast according to their ‘strengths’ or put into a group where they have potential. Then there are the kids that the director, choreographer and musical director struggle finding a place for, they get assigned to tech along with the kids who actually really want to do tech.

Casting is never easy, and people are always disappointed if they don’t get what they wanted and often more disappointed when they did not get cast the way their parents were hoping. We often receive emails from unhappy parents explaining “how hard it is for them to write an email of this nature but…” and so we steal a line from Royal Guard 2 & 3 and now we have Royal Guard 4 and an angry costume designer because he must now make another Royal Guard costume, when the script originally only called for 1…and so it goes (you get the point).

The Tech Kids

I am working with the tech kids, and I am very excited about ‘making’ the show with them. Tech kids are responsible for sets, props, lighting, sound and all other ‘technical’ elements that may arise. It all sounds really cool, however, if you are a kid who really wanted to perform, deliver that funny line or sing a solo, you might end up pretty bummed if you got assigned to doing tech.

So I though to myself how can the tech kids experience the magic of theatre and make something magical, something that has their craftsmanship written all over it, so that they feel super proud of making this awesome thing and most of all that they enjoy making something that they didn’t think they could make? What is this this super-awesome thing we make, you may ask? The answer: a cardboard camel.

A CAMEL? MADE OUT OF CARDBOARD? NOT very magical you may think. However, think War Horse style…just minus the many thousands of dollar (for those of you who are not familiar with War Horse). So super inspired, I start building a prototype to show the director and instructors at our meeting at the end of the day.

Presenting the Prototype

So at the end of the day I presented the prototype to the director, choreographer, musical director and production manager and other designers and told them that i hoped to make an almost life-size puppet that 3 kids could operate. The director, choreographer and musical director responded very positively, the rest were pretty skeptical. The production manager asked to see the prototype up-close.

He was concerned . A puppet this size would cost a lot of money which was not available in the budget (it was after-all Summer camp not the National Theatre).

…We’ll make it from cardboard! Well mostly!

To which the respons was…Cardboard is expensive, $100 wouldn’t be buy enough cardboard for a puppet this scale!

No problem! I’m from SA, we literally make shows with shoe strings (just kidding, but almost). We’ll use recycled materials!

…then there was silence…

…I then followed up promising it wouldn’t cost more than $100, after all this is the Bay Area, and even though there’s a drought it rains more Amazon boxes than actually rain

…I smile…

You know you have one and a half weeks to make this?

Yes! (Not fully realising how little time we have.)

You do realise that the most experience person in your crew is 13 (other than you)?

Yes!

And that some cannot even use scissors yet, let alone box-cutters? (I have a kid who tried to cut paper holding the scissors upside-down, with the wrong hand.)

Yes!

…I’m still smiling, however, my eyes widen (slightly)…

Well, in that case, sure-! Try!…

…So that’s exactly what we are doing — trying and trying to make some magic with some pretty awesome, smart and enthusiastic kids.

How to start making magic?

So after the meeting I went to sit down make a list of materials we would need to start, and then thought to call some recycling centres to ask for some cardboard. I then had an idea to talk to the education director and ask that he send an email to campers’ parents asking them to send 1 empty Amazon or cardboard box to camp the following day. We had 46 campers who are all from Silicon Valley, surely there were some boxes at home somewhere. The education director said “No problem!” and then said “Hey, lets go speak to the community centre across the road they get huge deliveries all the time!”. And so we went and asked if they had any boxes for us.

“Yes! Loads! And big ones too! But…” they said… “But?” we said… “We just threw them all away, you better check the dumpster!”…And so we ran…Turns out the community centre had landed us the mother load of cardboard boxes with perfect cardboard sheets inside and MANY of them! So we jumped in the dumpster, pulled out the boxes and hauled them back to theatre!

We were amped! We are going to get to make this camel and it is going to be MAGIC! And so we have begun making the large camel! I showed them some War Horse video clips along with the prototype and explained to them that because of constraints, our Camel would not look like Joey from War Horse but that we were going to TRY make something similar with cardboard and the other resources and skills that we had available.

The kids accepted the challenge, because I think they saw the magic in Joey and badly want to be a part of making something like.

We have by no means “won” nor are we finished making the puppet (we still have a week left), but we are trying and we are excited and ambitious. We don’t have all the answers, there is a lot of trial and error and we don’t always know what to do (it would be nice to have some of the engineering moms and dads “consulting”). BUT we are having loads of fun trying to figure it out, and the sheer thrill of knowing that IF we pull this off, it will be Magic. Magic that we were a part of making.

So watch this space…I will keep you all updated!

The thing I realised (and it is not just summer camp, it is almost with all school plays): the kids want to be part of the ‘magic’ of theatre and so do their parents, they just misappropriate it. They (parents, kids, instructors, directors, theatre-makers and even I do too) forget, and think the magic is in the lead role, the kid with the most lines, the solo or the biggest gag.

But really some of the most magical moments that I have experienced watching both professional theatre and children’s theatre is when I see the performers and artisans do or make something that I didn’t expect or think they were capable of doing. It is the suspense of disbelief — therein lies the magic. People who want to make magic and who see the value in going the extra mile in an attempt to make magic, should work in children’s theatre.

I’m so glad that these people exist. And that not all people and places are make believe.