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Hamilton Spectator

All the world's a summer camp

There was a dissection going on in the director's lounge on the second floor of Theatre Aquarius. No blood. But by the end, a lot of guts. As in confidence. The seven teenage girls seated around music teacher Treasa Levasseur were working through the lyrics of 'This Is Me,' from the Broadway musical and film 'The Greatest Showman' (starring Hugh Jackman, Zendaya and Zac Efron), figuring out how to move from one section to another. Levasseur pushed a few keys on her phone and the music spit out from a powerful speaker on the ground by her keyboard. 'Everyone feeling good about their parts?' she asked. 'Not terrible,' one girl groaned. Teenagers. These teens were one of three groups of children participating in this year's Theatre Aquarius summer camp. Three programs are offered this year: Glee-atre, a weeklong song-acting-and-dance program; a weeklong comedic acting class based on commedia dell'arte; and a creation camp, where students write the songs and story for a musical, then act and direct it in two weeks. (You read that right.) As well, each of the programs is divided by age group. There are teens (14 to 17 years old), 'middles' (10 to 13 years old) and 'littles' (six to nine years old). Levasseur asked two girls to approach a microphone for their solos. They sang. She got them to do it again. And again. Each time, pushing: 'Can you repeat that with conviction?' 'Can you give me a Superman pose?' Speak the lyric, Levasseur asked: 'I am brave, I am bruised; I am who I'm meant to be: this is me.' 'What is the feeling under this lyric?' 'Confidence,' they answered in one voice. 'Can we dial up the confidence?' You could hear the volume in your feet. Camp starts the same each day, with a group circle of all the campers, teachers, volunteers and 'emerging leaders,' or junior teachers. Last Tuesday, the day started with a round of duck-duck-goose and what's known as the clapping game, where a camper claps at their neighbour, the neighbour 'receives' the clap and then repeats the move to their neighbour and on around the circle the clap goes. Such games are normal warm-ups for acting students, no matter what age. Then the kids break up into three areas of the theatre under the direction of three teachers: music with Levasseur in the lounge; dance with choreographer Katie Edwards in the Studio theatre; and acting, under the direction of Stacy Smith on Aquarius's main stage. Stacy Smith leads the 'middles' through a session on acting. Each session culminates in a showcase where the kids perform the songs they've worked on all week for family and friends. One recent morning, the 'littles' group, comprising 16 or so girls, performed stretching exercises under the direction of emerging leader Juaneta Noman. A butterfly exercise — seated with the soles of their sneakers touching and the knees bouncing up and down — turned into a discussion about pizza toppings. Faves: cheese and pepperoni. And then 'I only like mushrooms when they're on pizza.' Noman asked the girls what kind of animals populate the world of 'The Lion King.' Answers ranged from 'courageous lion' to 'farting warthog' and 'wise meerkat.' After each answer, they moved about the stage channelling that animal. Noman pointed out that there are ways for actors to 'be' an animal on stage without crawling on hands and knees: finding a characteristic of that animal and inhabiting that. A girl pointed out that sloths sleep all day, then lay on stage. Noman seemed completely unfazed by the easy distractions. To her, being a teaching assistant to Stacy Smith was a matter of creating a welcoming environment for the children, something Smith echoed. Being on stage acting can be scary, she said. Smith said she isn't so much interested in building their confidence to get on stage than in establishing 'safe spaces where we can create.' Theatre games open the door. Theatre Aquarius campers look over the lyrics to 'I Just Can't Wait to be King.' Because the culmination of this particular session, Glee-atre, was a song-and-dance showcase, Smith's acting class was designed around getting the student performers to inhabit the lyric. One of the lyrics from the middles' song — 'Try Everything' from the movie 'Zootopia' — says 'I mess up tonight, I lost another fight.' The question to the tweens was whether they should aim to interpret that lyric as a character in the film or relate to it personally. The answers were mixed, but soon enough Smith got her neophytes to understand that in musical theatre, as in any drama, you'll lose the audience if you can't convince them of the authenticity of the emotion. To do this, she had them break down lyrics into a set of emotions they could act out in what are called 'tableaux,' like a staged still life. 'I messed up tonight' and 'I lost another fight' became opportunities to physically know what a lyric meant. Then, each actor was required to perform a dramatic reading of the lyrics. 'Don't just say the text, but make it personal, to your own story.' Later, the 14 girls and two boys stood before their campmates acting out 'I messed up tonight, I lost another fight, I still mess up, but I'll just start again.' Acting like they meant it. Acting like there were no truer words in their still-young worlds. Openings for the single-week comedy acting camp and the two-week creation camp, July 21 to Aug. 1, remain. For other summer camps in the Hamilton area, check out or .