Every summer the theatre company I work for holds summer camps from June through August and as head of the Education Department, it is my job to plan, prep and run the program. There’s a lot of work that goes into planning summer camps; typically I start planning for the following year in late September of the year before. Aside from picking the camp dates (typically 9 weeks), my job responsibilities before camp begins are: deciding on the locations and confirming those with members of the city/local theater, choosing script titles and musical theatre songs, interviewing and staffing every camp with at minimum 3 staff members, setting up and monitoring camp registration, writing and editing scripts, editing songs, ordering and organizing all of our camp supplies, scheduling and planning staff training answering any and all parent questions regarding camps, and running the weekend long camp training. 

Once camps begin, it’s 9 weeks of continually prepping for camps as the summer continues, handling parent questions, complaints and concerns, helping teachers handle any issues that come up with students and general questions that they have, arranging substitutes if an emergency comes up, and just general admin work to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible. If you couldn’t tell, it’s a lot of work. I’m very lucky to have amazing co-workers who help me whenever and however they can, but it’s still a lot of work and the summer can be pretty exhausting.

We had a very successful summer, but I was absolutely ready for a break! I feel so fortunate that I was able to take 3 weeks off and get some relaxation time in; and one of the things I did was buy some books! I bought quite a few plays in June for my 30 Plays in 30 Days challenge, and I bought one book in July, but I wanted to wait until I was finished with camp to do a big book haul, so once I was on break I headed over to the bookstore and decided to 👏🏼 treat 👏🏼 my 👏🏼self 👏🏼!

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