Crazy Kids Drama Camp

3 years ago, my daughter was enrolled in a week long arts camp at a public school with a few friends.  The camp was cancelled for 3 days because of a crazy guy the police were trying to catch who had keys to all the schools.  I was sad my daughter didn't get to go to camp with her friends, so I invited them over to do a drama camp at our house.  We played some drama games and video taped a 5 minute version of "Jack and the Beanstalk". The kids had a great time, and loved watching themselves on the TV.  And that's how "Crazy Kids Drama Camp" was born.

The next year the kids came over for 3 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  We thought of different fairy tales, raided our halloween costumes and dress up boxes, and tried to put them all together.  Our final product was 25 minutes long, complete with commercials.  It was entitled "Pickle Chicken, a Fixed Up Mairy Tale".  

This year, our production was called "The Wonderful Writer of Loz" and was part of an "Enchanted Theatre" TV show.  It ended up being 32 minutes long, so I won't post it all, but I wanted to share a few parts.  One of the girls was the hostess of "Enchanted Theatre", and sat in a armchair in front of the fireplace. She introduced the show at the beginning, and closed it at the end. Her parting words were "Join us next week for our presentation of "Egg White and the 7 chickens", and the kids thought it would be funny to make a trailer for that show, so I thought I'd share that. 

The kids are very creative, and come up with all sorts of silliness to put in the show.  Although I usually present a basic outline, all the dialogue and such is on the spur of the moment.  Sometimes the show goes in a different direction than when we started, and so by the end some earlier parts don't make sense, but the kids don't seem to care.  I think their favorite part is making the commercials.  They come up with a product and how to present it all on their own.  Occasionally I'll throw in a few suggestions (the boys shot an "invisible steak sauce" commercial that was completely nonsensical) but most of it is their own work.  Here's a commercial they did for "Get There Right Now Programmable Shoes".

Actually, I think even more than the commercials, the kids like to see the bloopers I put at the end of the movie.  In fact, sometimes I think they mess up on purpose while we are filming so that there will be bloopers to put at the end.



As you may have noticed, we seem to think chickens are funny around here, and so in each show we always try to have a chicken.  The first year, Joshua was a chicken that laid golden eggs.  The next year he was a chicken that laid magic wishing eggs.  This year, our friend William took over the roll of chicken and was the wicked witch's devious chicken servant.  Now to start planning for next year . . .