ANNUAL REPORT 2010–2011 - Camphill Special School

(L-R) Robin Kaip and John Pelletier
in The Appointment.
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Haley was an awfully cute pirate in our Mardi Gras
production of Peter Pan.
Our school year began with an outdoor
Michaelmas pageant.
The senior class hit it out of the park with their
presentation of Damn Yankees.
Elizabeth gave a stellar performance as Antonio
in the eighth grade rendition of The Merchant
of Venice.
Even in their wild costumes, Ariel and Willie didn’t
frighten anyone in Peter Pan!
production of Peter Pan. The senior musical
Damn Yankees, complete with singing
and dancing, delighted audiences, and
a community pageant unfolded before
Easter as everyone took turns as actors
or audience members.
Before we said good-bye for the summer,
the eighth graders offered Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice and fourth graders presented
the rousing tale of Thor’s Hammer.
No one will forget those fearsome giants!
Theatre is part of community life in other
forms, too. Parents and volunteers sew
costumes, assist in building sets and
props, and help with all sorts of lastminute
tasks. In our School of Curative
Education and Social Therapy, a professional
training course preparing curative
educators of the future, Tina Bruckner
guides students in the creation, design,
production, and presentation of an annual
puppet show and Norma Lindenberg
directs them in a major production each
year. Robin Kaip, houseparent in Antanor
and our land crew leader, has made a tradition
of writing and producing an original
work each year.
All these performances reflect what we
know to be sound pedagogy, especially for
children with special needs. Our teachers
continually seek ways to engage students,
and history, literature—and even math!—
can become more accessible through
theatre arts. Movement and memory skills,
language arts, focusing, following directions,
and the retention and integration
of content all can be addressed through
drama, whether in carefully planned
productions or spontaneous classroom
moments.
Beyond strictly educational applications,
we know that the use of drama can
address deeper issues. It is a sad reality
that society can lock people with special
needs into limited identities, and children
often are described solely in terms of
their relationships with a disability. This
is the opposite of the holistic approach
at Camphill Special School. Participation
in theatre offers children opportunities
to discover, explore, and develop many
aspects of their personalities that are
unrelated to special needs.
As Hamlet tells us, “The play’s the thing!”
Drama essential
for “seminarists,”
too
By Robin Kaip, “seminarist,”
coworker, house father, and
playwright
It has become a tradition, for me
at least, to write and produce
a play for our community each
year. I don’t remember how it got
started, but I know it’s going to
happen again next year!
This year it was my pleasure and
honor to work with six wonderful
coworkers on the production of The
Appointment, my play about seven
quirky individuals who find themselves
in a doctor’s waiting room
expecting to see the physician.
As it turns out, they all have died and
need to resolve something from their
past life before they can “move on.”
Fortunately, one of the characters is
clairvoyant and may be able to point
them in the right direction.
It always amazes me how we, as
seminarists and coworkers at Camphill
Special School, manage to find
the time and space in our busy lives
to create theatre. Because there is
so much else that must be done, this
almost feels like an impossible “extra”
that we are trying to accomplish. But
somehow when it does happen, it is
the most rejuvenating and rewarding
experience. It gives us the fuel to
continue doing what we are doing.
It is an outlet as well as a source of
energy, especially if it touches people
and gives them something to take
home and think about.
Editor’s note: Robin has been a
member of the Camphill Special
School community since 2006.
He is from Munich, Germany.
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