adjusting and orienting

After the seven and a half hour drive from Evanston to Minneapolis and a few days in limbo, I can finally say I'm here (with my bike!) and settled in. 

Friday, after not nearly as many hours of sleep as I'd have liked, the education interns met in the basement of CTC for a day-long orientation. I entered the building using the official summer door code, and walked down a brightly colored staircase into Theatre Arts Training (TAT). The walls in the basement hallway are lined with murals featuring quotes from past workshops - my favorite so far is "good theatre makes your brain explode!" Down the hallway is the massive dance studio where we met and spent two hours getting to know each other and playing drama games with three of this summer's teaching artists. The early childhood teaching artist explained throughout how to modify games for children at different levels of development: three year olds begin with parallel play (playing individually along side one another) and don't yet know how to play with others, so passing an impulse around a circle would be virtually impossible, but five year olds can maybe get a pulse going around in one direction. We then floated around the room as balloons and eventually popped; we were strangers on park benches; we swam through Jell-O and thick, gooey mud; and we sang some songs. 

The rest of the day - talking about logistics and getting the space ready for camps on Monday - doesn't  really warrant any more detail.

I will begin my time as a TAT intern on Monday working with high schoolers in a week-long camp based on the (very dark) one-act The Lottery. I have no idea what to expect. During orientation, we spent a lot of time talking about "sharing days," which occur on the last day of each camp, when parents are invited to see a final performance. I'm beginning to realize that these camps are less about creative drama (which is defined as "an improvisational, non-exhibitional, process-centered form of drama...") and more about theatre training for young people. Although theatre training is less exciting to me than creative drama, I'm excited to see how the two can come together to create a final product that I'm sure will be incredible.