SUMMER ACTING CAMPS

The duration of summer acting camps run from one week to an entire month.  Generally speaking this is where aspiring actors get their feet wet – metaphorically speaking.   It is also, generally speaking,  the watershed that weans out the romantics.   These are the people with stars in their eyes and have not understood the long hours of training that has got most actors to their ‘overnight success’.   At the end of the summer acting camp, there is always a performance to highlight the recently learned skills and show the potential talent.   Talent scouts often appear at these functions in order to spot any outstanding talents.

These summer acting camps can range from professionally run and intense workshops in the heart of LA, to Backwater Junction jamboree performances that are little more than a means of keeping the kids off the streets during the hot summer months!   The only way you will be able to know which is which, is simply by doing your research.   Most camps will have promotional materials that should give you some clue as to how long they have been going – and longevity should suggest proper organization.   You can always go to the local library where just about every local facility is known by a member of the staff and they will be only too happy to promote their local talents.   The best reference would be to speak to someone that has actually attended the camp – especially if they are not staff members.

So let’s get to the main point of this article – using summer acting camps as a writers resource.   There is no richer source if you intend to write theatrical pieces.   Summer acting camps allow you to test out materials on very eager participants.   Nothing is more sobering for a writer than to hear his text spoken by someone other than his immediate family!  Kids are generally not known for their tact - and if your material stinks, you are going to hear about it pretty quickly.  If however your prose trips lightly off the tongue, you will be in seventh heaven as the words come to life - and take on their own dynamic that couldn’t have been anticipated on the page. 

Staff will be happy to allow you to test your materials or even modify existing curricula (if it is fully structured).  A writer should look on summer acting camps as though they were potential Broadway shows performing out in the provinces.  Shows are invariably tested out in the provinces so that the weaknesses can be strengthened and the material honed - before being brought into the scorching public light of Broadway.

At summer acting camps you can get direct feedback from actors as to what they like and don’t like about your writing.   This is GOLD!   Something that you wrote and thought was deeply profound might get a laugh – and you will see that you had not set it up clearly enough for the audience.  Another time when you thought you would get a laugh there was nothing!   Perhaps your character hadn’t been developed early enough for the audience to understand the irony of the statement that SHOULD have got a laugh.

One characteristic of summer acting camps is that they are always ooking for original material for the aspiring actors.   This is the deepest vein of gold that a writer is likely to come across.  These are people actively looking for your material.  To one person a tool may be simply a ‘shovel’ to another it will be a ‘mechanical excavating device utilizing the Archimedes principles of leverage’!   In the same way, summer acting camps may be viewed as vehicles to learn how to act.  To writers, summer acting camps should be look on as deep veins of gold waiting to be mined.