Ok so for the past few days i've been holed up in a scout hall in Pennant Hills singing, dancing, acting, writing, dancing and dancing. To explain i've been at the Science revue camp, which was brilliant. Anyway it was an interesting 3 days and 2 nights which consisted of very little sleep. For those who've tried it, living on very little sleep is not fun and absolutely hilarious at the same time.
Camp started at 9:30 on the 2nd of July, which meant rising early to catch a train from St Leonards, up to Thornleigh via Hornsby, crossing Pennant Hills Road which has an overpass (if only i'd found that out before trying to run across 2 sets of 3 lanes of traffic that just would not stop), and sitting around for an hour before the actual camp activities started.
(Photo Above: Group photo on social night taken around 1 in the morning)
Day 1 consisted of a getting to know each other activity, which was self explanatory (we all played games to get to know each other, like stuck in the mud and zombies), and a improvisation workshop.
The Improvisation workshop was lead by this guy named angus, who got us to basically do something, anything, and then come up with a justification to it. During the workshop I tried to sell my soul, buy a tricycle with training wheels, defeat a dojo master by farting ("pull my finger") and thought intensely about my own body.
After the impro work shop we had our compulsory workshops. I did acting, singing, dancing and then script writing, where I, played theatre sports games, learned the bass/baritone part for lean on me, learned part of a dance to 'Dr Jones-Aqua', and wrote a sketch (respectively).
At night after dinner (spag bol for anyone who's interested) we had a Ceroc workshop which was great, learnt how to do a male breakthrough, reverse turns, a pretzel and a few other smaller moves that chloe and I came up with on the dance floor.
The next day was alot more interesting. We had 2 different optional workshops (2 of either acting, singing, dancing or writing) and 2 guest host workshops for script writing and charcterisation. I chose acting (just because) and dancing (as I'm actually dancing for the revue). In acting we worked through a script that was possibly going to be used for this years revue, and in dancing we warmed up with a nutbush and then I learned part of a dance to 'Take on Me-Reel Big Fish'.
For the script writing workshop, the guest host didn't actually show up, so the production team and some exec members quickly drafted up a new one, which involved looking at parts of last years revue from a projector. As the sun set the light ended up washing out the projection, so for the last sketch that we watched we angled the projector at the ceiling. I should do that more often, its a lot easier, and far more relaxing. After learning a whole bunch of things that we needed to keep in mind for our scripts we went through a script, in groups, that were incomplete and were asked to figure out the CROW (characterisation, relationship, objective and whereabouts) of the sketch, and see if we could complete it.
(Photo On left: Ultimate panteening at the social)
Far easier said than done, my group got given a script that had been sitting around for 2 years incomplete as no one could really think of a great ending for it. Its about writing the bible, and thats all i'll say (don't want to give away too much detail just now) so there were a huge number of ways the script could have gone.
The next workshop after script writing was Characterisation. The most notable things that happened here were the mass introduction of a song/chant which became the fad of the camp, Alice (the guest host) breaking caitlyn's spirit with "find the pen" and rona the rasta pharoh. The song/chant went like this:
"i like the flowers, i like the daffodils, i like the mountains, I like the rolling hills, *in a whisper* I like the fireflies when the lights go out *shouting and dancing in a circle* BA DA BA DA BA DA BA DA BA BA DA!", and it got sung so many times it just became plain annoying. Truthfully it was fun for the first few times that I heard it (earlier that day during the acting workshop i mentioned earlier) but it grew old very quickly. For me it was a classical example of song abuse, which many FM radio stations (and my brother) are guilty of.
When Alice went about breaking Caitlyn (our social director) she played a 'guess where the pen is' game, which was impossible to win. She would get caitlyn to close her eyes, then she would put the pen somewhere around her, at any distance and told caitlyn to use one move to get the pen. Highly improbable to complete. It resulted in Caitlyn saying "I don't wanna" when Alice told her to get the pen for the 5th time.
But the highlight of that workshop was rona the rasta pharoh. It was hilarious, and there's very little that i can do to recreate the scene for you because a) i was laughing to hard at the accent and b) i wouldn't do it any justice, unfortunately its just one of those things that you just had to be there for. All i can do is to tell you to think, Pharoh, make him rastapharian, make him say "fucking huge" and "all my shit" and you have it.
That night we had pizza for dinner and then had social, which I spent dancing the night away. Around about 2 in the morning, i started teaching people to dance thriller.
(Photo on left: Stacks on Isaac after teaching thriller for 2 and a something hours)
On the last day everyone was tired or hung over, but we persisted with our work. First order of business was breakfast (where julian got woken up by a chorus of WAKE UP JULIAN, think wake up jeff but with julian instead of jeff). Followed by the last workshop. I chose dance again because i was cold, and in doing so learnt the beginning of the dance to take on me that i learnt the day before and then we finished off for the day by having a giant circle of fines.
To explain myself better, the science revue is a not for profit organisation, that donates its profits to Cystic fibrosis NSW. Fines are a way of getting the crew and cast to donate in more hilarious ways. Generally if you do something that someone doesn't agree with, you get a fine, but if you do something awesome you get a fine aswell. Yes i know its counter intuitive but it was fun. I ended up with saying fuck (it was inside a sketch but *shrug* i'll pay that) and teaching thriller.
Overall science revue camp was awesome and now I'm off to melbourne :D
thats going to be the next few days of posts.
Thanks for reading
-Charles
p.s. if you wanna see a video of the nutbush warm up its on my facebook.
go to http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1025262985639
or alternatively watch it here seeing as i just uploaded it.
so i've been working a lot this week. More than i've ever worked in a week, EVER. That said, i did take time out to have fun. for instance, during my 2 hour long break, i went out, bought cans of V and then went back to work to play that donkey kong game, with mario, and the barrells and the ladders, on the console thats sitting in the store. I managed to fill the score board but didn't manage to beat the high score. Damned 41700 is still sitting there. But i'll beat it one day.
