Category: KATA! Summer 2018

Today we welcomed our second group of campers and dove straight in with getting-to-know-you games and learning about the rules of improv, pantomime, devising, and acting in general. Both groups learned music from Once on This Island with Gaylan as well. KidsAct! spent the afternoon working on ensemble building through kinesthetic response activities, and we were very impressed with the way they handled such an advanced activity! TeensAct! worked on modernizing fairy tales and created small scenes from modern versions of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, which were wonderful. Tomorrow we embark on an adventure to The Clark Museum in search of material for devising our plays!

We drew even closer to the culmination of our first session today as we worked and worked to perfect the music, the dancing, and the staging of both of our wonderful shows. It was exciting for the KidsAct and TeensAct groups to be able to each do a full dress rehearsal onstage and for them to watch the other group and cheer each other on! Today also included pizza for lunch and a couple rousing rounds of “Yeehaw!” to follow, which kept the fun going all day long. The plays that each group has created over the past two weeks are delightfully creative and wonderful, and we simply cannot wait to share them at our final performances tomorrow!

Today we took refuge from the heat at the much better air-conditioned Wolfson center, where we spent all day work shopping and refining our plays. TeensAct! worked diligently on completing a first draft of their entire play, while KidsAct! nailed down the first half of theirs with transitions and everything, adding in new comedic bits along the way. We’re excited for the fourth of July but can’t wait to jump back into working on our plays on Thursday!

Following our trip to the Berkshire Museum, we dove straight into devising our original musicals, drawing on inspiration from what we saw there. Sam also introduced both KidsAct and TeensAct to the world of commedia, which provided additional material to utilize in terms of characters that could be incorporated into our stories. Jane also taught an improv class with KidsAct, where they played with emotions, and Katy taught choreography for “Believe” from Finding Neverland, which will be the opening number. The structure of both plays – one a tale of forbidden love set in Paris and the other a story of Greek gods and mortals – is really starting to take shape!

Today we took KidsAct and TeensAct on the road to the Berkshire Museum in search of material for our devised plays. KidsAct focused mostly on studying the animals in the taxidermy exhibit and in the aquarium, including mountain lions, chameleons, seahorses, legless lizards, and poison dart frogs. They chose animals that excited them, and once they returned from the museum they worked on embodying their chosen animals. Finally, they devised scenes by drawing inspiration from their animals to create characters. TeensAct studied the other exhibits in the museum and was inspired by a statue of Aphrodite to create scenes rooted in Greek mythology, one involving Kronos and the other surrounding a fight over Paris. It was an exciting day that sparked many creative efforts that will be the beginnings of our very own plays!

The first day of camp was a resounding success! KidsAct and TeensAct spent the day playing get-to-know-you games, learning about and practicing pantomime and the rules of improv, and devising using still images. KidsAct represented fairy tales in three images, and TeensAct told stories about when they were surprised in three images. Both groups also learned a song from the musical Finding Neverland called “Believe,” and TeensAct learned a dance to the song. The day concluded with sharing the images that had been created and with a few rounds of Park Bench and Three-Headed Expert. Altogether, it was a successful and fun-filled first day!