A Star is Born

Cameron had a lead role in the school play this year. Instead of a musical, they did a drama called, "Macbeth on the Loose." It's about a group of students staging the play "Macbeth"--each character chooses the character in "Macbeth" that they want to play, generally because they share similar qualities with them. They begin to act like the Shakespearen characters as they plot and scheme to get the roles they want. Each Shakespearen character has its counterpart in one of the students in the play. Sounds confusing, but it was very easy to follow. In one of the opening scenes all the students have gathered for audition, but no one has read the play or really understands anything about it, so in going through the auditions, the audience gets an overview of the Shakespearan characters and the plot.

Cameron played Gordon/MacDuff. He is terribly legalistic and loves pretending his cadet group are real soldiers. He spends much of the play trying to keep everyone to his sense of order and spying on people. Throughout most of the play, he's pretty annoying (and funny), but in the 2nd act he actually figures out what the lead character has done to get the part of Macbeth and stages a coup that takes place during the actual production of the play, where he "dethrones" the main character and brings back the other kids who should have had parts they lost because of Macbeth's actions.

This group was younger than last year's. The play is 90 minutes and all spoken dialogue, much of it the actual lines from "Macbeth" so it was quite challening to learn the lines. Of the main characters, one is in 8th grade, one is in 6th, and the other 2 (including Cameron) were in 7th. They did a fantastic job.

Because the school is so small (15-20 in each class from 6th grade on up) it requires a lot of participation from everyone to do anything. ISM is blessed with 2 unbelievable drama teachers who do such a wonderful job of inspiring, encouraging, and challenging the students. Cameron has really found a niche in drama here.

We are so proud of his effort and his success this weekend.

And the red (ginger) hair? One of the tea ladies likes to read fortunes in the tea leaves (generally badly). She warns the lead character (Ed/Macbeth) to "beware of the man with ginger hair." Ed hires one of the school bullies to rough up every red-haired kid in school. But no one knows Gordon (Cameron) has red hair because he never takes off his beret and uniform. During the production of "MacBeth" Cameron rips off his beret and shows himself to be the "ginger-haired man."

Assuming I have any luck, I'll be putting a clip on YouTube, so stay tuned for the link.