Dear Mom and Dad,
Okay, so I'm writing you from summer camp like you told me to. You were right--I know I was crying and screaming and maybe pulling my hair out when the bus came to take me away, and you said I wouldn't want to leave, and yes, okay, I'm having a good time. So you were right, okay? Shut up about that already.
The Teaching Shakespeare Institute, sponsored by the NEH and hosted by the Folgers Shakespeare library, has myriad programs and activities designed to make us better teachers of the Immortal Bard, and our camp counselors make sure we do what they think will help. For this reason, the Boys Cabin has an eight o'clock curfew cabin while the Girls' Cabin's curfew isn't until eleven p.m. That's so we boys can get the rest we need in order to develop and hone our analytic skills, while the girls get a chance to teach the counselors how to do the Electric Slide.
We do Performance Workshops, where we're taught how to emote, memorize long passages of iambic pentameter, and cook bear meat on an open fire. The first day of our workshops, we did individual role playing/improv skits. Randall got the part of the Oxford scholar; Geoff got the part of Traveling Player and Annie got Archbishop of Canterbury. But I got a way better part than those losers--I was assigned the part of the Stable Boy, and my line was "I'll clean that up." My counselor told me to stress different words in the line to see what meanings I could elicit:
"I'll clean that up."-->I'm the man for the job.So now that I'm learning to emote and do Shakespeare kinetically, I totally think I've got a shot at playing in the RSC. As long as there are stable boy parts.
"I'll clean that up."-->I won't eat it or throw it in the girls' cabin.
"I'll clean that up."-->Horse manure? That was my major in Stable U.
"I'll clean that up.-->I love America.
In the afternoons we do these nature hikes past the Potomac River, looking for signs of congressmen and lobbyists so we can put their names in our Nature Books. Then we do curriculum sessions, where we brainstorm activities and listen to guest teachers talk about what works and what doesn't. (Mostly what works.) Sometimes we play games of Oxfordians and anti-Oxfordians, where the Oxfordians get to wear cowboy hats and hunt anti-Oxfordians who think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays, and the anti-Oxfordians dress up in war paint and write dissertations.
Then in the evenings we meet in the Great Hall to eat pizza and drink beer. Sometimes the camp director tells spooky ghost stories about Henry Clay Folger wandering the halls of the Folger library, where legend has it he emerges from the lower vault (where the folios and Readers Digest periodicals are kept) to eat pizza and drink beer. Legend also has it that if you leave an extra slice and a Pabst, the ghost of Henry Folger will appear and tell you your fortune. So I stayed up real late one night in front of a cold slice of pepperoni and waited for him. But then I fell asleep, and Randall put my hand in cold water trying to get me to wet my sleeping bag. I woke up in time though, and told him, "I'll take care of that." Then I punched him. So if the camp calls to complain, that's what really happened.
So, to wrap this charade of a letter up, having lots of fun, making new friends, blah blah blah. Now, when is my care package coming? The cookies and 15th century Geneva Bible? Come on, guys, I need them so the cool kids will let me sit at their table. Will write more soon, and make sure you stay out of my room while I'm gone.
Love,
gjl
