Parents' Weekend, Part The First

Well hello again out there! It's the first parents' weekend of the summer and we had our camp show yesterday and our parents' show this morning and Circus Rocks! was a success, if I'm to believe the rave reviews coming in from parents and staff. And I do. The Powers That Be of camp are calling it their favorite circus show ever, which is great. I caught all five of my flying trapeze kids in a row, which is sweet, and the rest of my kids did a great job. My staff did amazing things with their acts, too. What's especially awesome about all of this is the fact that we did so well even though we got STUPID AMOUNTS OF RAIN this session. The circus here is outdoors, so our rehearsals get cancelled when it rains unless we can find space indoors, and even that doesn't help with aerial acts because there is no place to hang aerial equipment in any of the theaters here. The good news (besides the fact that the show went swimmingly in spite of the rain) is that now, more than ever, the kids are asking for a circus building. I've told them to tell their parents to tell the camp administration how much they would like for our circus to be indoors. We'll see how far that kind of pressure gets us.

So, Into the Woods is up right now and, after this, the kids go back to their bunks and then we let them out again for pizza and soda and music on the lawn. Then they get to stay up for hours if they want. But this year we're having a serious bear issue (there are four bears that come onto camp every night, somtimes in the evenings, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, and they don't seem to want to stop visiting. I've seen them several times. One teenaged bear likes to hang out by our cabin, in fact. There are photos and overturned garbage cans to prove it. More about the bears later), so I don't know how this will change the traditional "Hell Night" activities. Anyway, then there are more shows tomorrow, then the kids who were just here for session one leave, then we have production meetings for session two shows, then Monday the new kids arrive. No, not those New Kids, the session two campers, of course. And we do it all again!