Focused and Celebrated

wizard of oz camp cast
beware of the dangerous woods

Producing and performing a stage musical ordinarily takes a group of people hours of rehearsal over several months, unless, that is, it’s a group of Rockbrook Camp girls at work. Today we witnessed the powerful talent of these girls when they presented their production of “The Wizard of Oz.” With only about two and half weeks to prepare, the girls put on an amazing show complete with characters, costumes, music, singing, and stage acting.  The familiar storyline made it even more enjoyable to see our friends from camp —”I know her!”— dress as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin man, the Lion, and the Wicked Witch of the West… and Toto too.  Likewise, it was delightful to hear the girls sing favorite songs like “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead,” “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” and “If I Only Had a Brain.”

During the intermission, more campers took the stage as the different age groups took turns performing a choreographed group dance. There was such enthusiastic support for all of these performers, as the crowd of campers watching cheered and clapped spontaneously.

Both in the dance performances and in the play, the girls seemed poised and relaxed, happily following the choreography and delivering their lines. It was clear they were having a grand time, slyly giving each other a smile at times, laughing at their minor missteps, and loving the attention and admiration from the audience. Wonderful!

girl camper friends

Later in the evening as the sun began to set, the whole camp gathered at Vesper rock dressed in their uniforms for the closing campfire of the session. It’s a tradition, our “Spirit Fire,” that goes back to the very first summer when Nancy Carrier founded Rockbrook. She knew, and we continue to acknowledge, that when girls spend this much time together, build this much meaning together, grow this close, they need a way to express their feelings about camp before departing. The program of the Spirit Fire, for this reason, is a series of traditional camp songs, and speeches delivered by campers and counselors, with Sarah wrapping everything up. The setting is gorgeous— nearby the lake, surrounded by huge trees, with crickets and frogs chirping their calls over the crackling fire. Tonight it was also emotional as several speakers described Rockbrook as the only place were they feel accepted enough to be fully themselves. But mostly, we heard about how the people here at camp are so special, in ways vastly different than friends at home. For these girls, camp is different.  And that’s a very good thing.

The final part of the Spirit Fire program is a candle lighting ceremony. Sarah lights a white candle from the fire and then passes that flame to every camper as they file by. Slowly, with lit candles in hand, the whole camp then forms a line around the lake. Facing inward, singing softly, it’s a last moment of quiet reflection to end the night.

Looking out over the candle reflections in the water, we all felt it tonight. We all knew this has been a wonderful session. The spirit of Rockbrook, focused and celebrated during the campfire, has affected us all, connecting us profoundly to this place and to each other.

rockbrook camp closing campfire

Going Old-School

The Winners!

On Sunday, our campers took part in a longtime Rockbrook tradition: Miss RBC. Judging by its name alone, you might think that Miss RBC is just a regular, run-of-the-mill beauty pageant. You might also wonder, then, why it has any place at a summer camp that doesn’t tend to glorify those things that are glorified in typical beauty pageants.

Not to worry, though—our Miss RBC is a glorification only of the most Rockbrook-y values: silliness, fun, crazy costumes, and teamwork. The “contestants” (one from each cabin) put on their craziest costumes, parade around the gym doing their funniest beauty-pageant walk, and answer questions such as “Would you rather get to school every day riding an elephant, a dragon, or a witch’s broom?” (The answer that was given to this question, incidentally, was “elephant,” though I myself would have chosen the broomstick—the relative discomfort is outweighed by the fact that it can neither step on you, nor set you on fire).

A Cappella
Question-and-Answer

Girls that, at school, might only be praised for their looks or their popularity, are celebrated here for the size of their sombrero, or for the fact that they knew that the only logical response to the question “What is something that should never be vacuumed,” was, “The fur of a medium-sized squirrel.”

Why was that the answer? Who knows. But the response was hilarious, and the whole gym applauded hard and loud for that contestant.

Still, the contestants’ question-and-answer portion is only one part of the Miss RBC process. The part that the campers (and staff) look forward to the most is definitely the talent portion. In the talent portion, entire cabins take the stage to perform something together—sometimes it is a dance, or an original song, or a skit, or anything else that they can think of. In recent years, the campers have tended to focus on elaborate dances, set to their favorite songs, which we play over the loudspeaker.

The Cup Song
CA's Talent

This session, however, we decided to throw a twist into these usual proceedings: no pre-recorded music. That’s right, we went old-school. We were a bit nervous, when we made this announcement, that it might throw the girls off and make for a less exciting talent show; as usual, however, we shouldn’t have doubted that our campers would rise to the occasion.

What unfolded Sunday afternoon, was absolutely the best Miss RBC I’ve ever seen. Cabins wrote and performed songs, sang in a cappella, performed beautiful dances while one cabinmate sang a pop song into the microphone, and one cabin even brought out pots and pans from the kitchen and performed a percussion piece. The talents were imaginative and daring, and all were incredibly impressive. We were so proud to see our campers rise to this new challenge and put on such a great show!

For The Fun Of It

Searching for Tadpoles

“Non-competitive” is a word that gets a lot of use here at camp. It serves as a reminder to campers and staff alike to pursue camp activities for the joy of it—for the thrill of acquiring new skills, and embarking on new adventures—not for the sake of victory.

Rafters in the Mist

We do our best to bring this non-competitive flavor to every facet of camp life.  Every cabin gets their own unique “award” for their skits during Evening Program (“Best Break-Dancing Statue of Liberty,” and “Best Impression of a Watermelon” were some recent favorites of mine), every cabin gets a prize at the end of Counselor Hunt, and every girl even gets their own birthday cake on Birthday Night, so the fall-, winter-, and spring-babies aren’t left out.

It isn’t that we think competition is bad. On the contrary, competition can be exciting, enriching, and even wholesome in the right setting. What we do try to promote at camp, though, that might be different from the messages of schools and sports teams, is replacing the drive to win with the drive to accomplish.

Teamwork in the Lake

We encourage our campers to accomplish as much as possible in their time at camp. We offer reams of friendship-bracelet designs of increasing complexity for them to try their hands at. We coax tentative swimmers into swimming class, so they can work on their strokes with the lifeguards. We stand patiently at the bottom of the Alpine Tower, to talk nervous climbers all the way to the top. That heady sense of awe and disbelief when a camper achieves something she didn’t think she would be capable of is one of the greatest parts of the camp experience, and usually occurs in each girl at least once when she’s here.

While we encourage accomplishments like these whenever we can, we also do our best to take away the push and pressure to achieve them. We let girls work at their own pace, for example, and allow them to drop activities that don’t interest them after just three days, rather than forcing them to continue, as might happen in a school. We help them to enjoy the process as much as the result, to gain more from the experience than from the prizes at the end.

Dancing to "Grease"
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

More importantly, we also try to strip away the urge to “get there first” that can be so prevalent in the outside world. That is, we take away that need to get to the top before anyone else, and to win at the expense of everyone else, that can so dampen the fun of any activity.

A perfect demonstration of this came in our Miss RBC pageant Sunday afternoon. Each cabin spent last week crafting their very own cabin “talent” for the show, which could have been a dance, a song, a skit, or anything else they could think of. All last week, I saw cabins working during their free times, planning during meals, and scavenging costume bins around camp, all to create the perfect talent for Miss RBC.

Every camper participated, and gave their all, making it a truly spectacular show. There were elaborately choreographed dances to songs from “Mamma Mia,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” original songs about checking for lice and the joys of camp, and one wonderful skit put on by our youngest campers, acting out one of our favorite camp songs, “I’m a Little Coconut.”

Skipping

The most remarkable thing about the show, though, was the genuine enthusiasm with which each cabin cheered for all the others. Each cabin seemed thrilled simply to be able to put on their own talent for the rest of the camp, and derived just as much enjoyment from watching all the others’. There was no uneasiness when campers saw a cabin that did particularly well, and no jealousy or resentment displayed toward the cabin that ultimately won the pageant. Indeed, that cabin found themselves surrounded by well-wishers as soon as the show was finished. The winning cabin was proud, of course, that they had won, but I heard more of them complimenting the other cabins on their talents than touting their own accomplishment.

Camp, of course, is a unique environment, but I always hope that this is a lesson that our campers take with them into the outside world. That something should be created, a task achieved, or a goal accomplished, simply for the satisfaction of accomplishing it, rather than for the attendant recognition and glory.