Round Two

I think my body is very confused with my work and sleeping schedule. I have to be at work at 8:30 every morning, but I like to leave the house by 7:30 so I can check e-mail and update this thing. I work until between 5:30 and 6:30, then go home and spend time with my host family and get some more work done in preparation for the next day. However, everyone goes to sleep around 8:00, and I can understand why! I’m exhausted by that time and usually stay up later to take advantage of some alone time to get work done and take care of personal things. But I’m still in bed by at least 9:30 every night! Oftentimes earlier! My body clock is generally very confused. Especially since I get so much sleep and am yet still very tired almost all the time. I guess that explains why coffee is one of Costa Rica’s main industries, eh?

The coffee here truly is amazing, by the way.

Well, the children’s program was infinitely better as far as behavior goes, and for that I am truly grateful. We did a few different exercises today that the kids really liked and got excited about, so that also helped with participation. It really helps to lay down ground rules with kids—somehow that didn’t occur to us until the second day of camp. I think we’re all used to working with kids who are older and know at least fundamentally what is expected of them. I know I’m definitely used to working with kids who are not primarily in my care, so they have their teacher’s rules to follow which I can also enforce. So it never really occurred to me to lay down the law of the FCCMT children’s program. This morning we had them all sit in a circle and come up with their own rules, which I think made them easier to enforce because the kids thought of them themselves and wrote them down on a big poster which we made them sign by tracing their handprints across the bottom of the page. We were even able to tie in the language issue by having everyone translate the rules they came up with to the best of the ability and write their rules in both languages so everyone could understand and learn a little vocab. I think it was quite a successful exercise. They were not, however, particularly enthused with the dancing. They were doing very well with all the preliminary exercises before I started actually teaching choreography, and then they completely lost interest. It was a pretty similar situation for the singing portion of the day. These are the two most important sections of the day for us! We need them to sing and dance “Food, Glorious Food” in the show in August! But participation was definitely better during the rest of the day, so hopefully that will eventually translate to singing and dancing as well.

I think it’s interesting to watch some of the younger ones in the senior cast as compared to some of the ones who are the same age in the children’s program. For example, José Daniel is the boy playing Oliver for us and he is only nine years old. He’s so great. He works really hard and even though he’s not perfect, he tries with all his might. It’s actually quite adorable. Every time I start teaching choreography he stands about four inches behind me the entire time and refuses to switch lines when I try to bring some of the people in the back up front. He says he can’t learn unless he’s right behind me. It’s very cute. But there are girls his age and even older in the children’s program who I would say are not as mature as Daniel is—aren’t girls supposed to be something like three years more mature than boys? The same goes for a couple of the other kids, but I know Daniel best and can make the best comparison with him as an example. However, there are some boys who are older than the kids in the children’s program who act so much more immature. One boy is thirteen, but you would probably never guess it. He never seems to be able to focus on what we’re doing at a given moment and put all his energy into it or not complain, backtalk, or make a joke out of the exercise. It honestly really frustrates me when people, especially kids who are old enough to behave themselves, don’t take what their doing seriously. I definitely had that issue with this kid today.

Otherwise, rehearsal with the senior cast went very well today. We did a little more of the same thing as we did yesterday with focus games and cast bonding type exercises, singing, and dancing before we broke for individual rehearsals for singing and blocking. During these couple of hours, I generally park myself near Lisa’s piano so I can listen in on all the vocal rehearsals and mark helpful things down in my vocal score from which I do all my choreography. It’s so exciting to hear the music finally coming together after just imagining it from sheet music for the last few weeks while I worked on choreography. On a slight tangent, I am so proud of myself for this show—I’m actually choreographing dances ahead of time (like, weeks!) instead of winging it, and I’m even writing my choreography down according to measures in the sheet music! Not only is this practice making my teaching much more organized, but it is also helping me learn to read sheet music better, which is a skill I could definitely use some practice with.

This summer is nothing like I thought it would be. I don’t really know what I expected. I don’t think I had a whole lot of expectations going into this process because I had such little time to build up my expectations. But I certainly don’t think I expected to learn so much. I’m doing a lot more singing than I had originally thought (Lisa needs someone to help the altos learn harmonies—it’s kind of difficult to lead a group in a harmony with very little musical experience), I’m learning a lot about choreography just through experiential learning, and most specifically I’m learning a lot more about the production side of theatre, particularly non-profit theatre. I always knew it took a lot of work and connections, but now that I’m actually the one doing everything I’m starting to understand better just how much my former directors and choreographers had to do behind the scenes, not to mention the work they have to do with kids to help them develop as performers and artists. So, even though they probably are not reading this blog, this is a huge cosmic “thank you” and “wow, you’re amazing” to all the directors I’ve worked with in my young life for making my theatre and dance experiences possible and for sculpting me into the passionate performer I am today.