Joshua H 5Lo

“Much Ado about Nothing”

It was this summer, and I was at camp. It was an average day for the area, a tiny bit chilly, and it had just stopped raining. The ground was wet, not to mention moist, and it was a fairly pleasant day, all in all. I was at Buck’s Rock Camp, creative and performing arts camp in New Milford, CT. I was drinking a Dr. Pepper in the Igloo, one of the 5 stages at the camp, the other ones were: the Actor’s Studio, the Stage, the Clown Shop, and the Dance Studio. I had previously performed in the Dance Studio (a play, not a dance!). I was very excited about performing in the Igloo.

Half the cast was going to buy snacks at the canteen, a big wooden shed that sells candy and beverages to campers and counselors. It is run by a man named Cameron Nadler, who went to the MTC in Westport. Can you believe it?!

I was waiting in the Igloo with my friend, Tom, and some other people, who were all rehearsing together to get ready for the play. I was last-minute cramming, because I still had half of a scene to memorize, and I only had 5 minutes until we started! I was worried because I couldn’t see my mother or friends yet and I was worried they might not have made it. I finished memorizing and stared at the clock: 11:56… 11:57… 11:58…11:59…12:00! The director ran in at the last second with our scenery and we hastily put it together. They started to slowly raise the curtain; one inch at a time… finally, the audience became visible to the actors, and vice versa. I stepped out as the director began to introduce the play…

About an hour later, as the play finally ended, I felt like I would faint from stage-fright if I stepped out in that stage one more time. It felt like there was a bunch of spiders dancing over my nerves, to set them off and scare me! Finally, the narrators announced that the play was over. We all went to bow to the audience, and I met up with my friend, T.J., who had been driven to my camp by my mom to see the performance, along with Matty and J.H., two brothers who are both my friends, besides the age difference between us. Once I got out of my costume and returned it, T.J., who has a very short attention span, told me that he couldn’t get his eyes off of me, and I had acted superbly. Everyone was delighted when I showed them the gifts I had made them, (the creative part). After everything had left, and my friends had gone home, I went back to the shops and made a delicious meat-roll thing in culinary and shared it with the people at wood shop and computers, where the people that didn’t get any were very mad at me because I didn’t have any left for them and every one else was talking about how good it tasted, I finally realized it just wasn’t such a big deal. So, as the play’s title states: It was all just “Much Ado about Nothing”