The staff of Camp Wanapoke. Photo by Saima Ahmed.
Following a pair of sold-out shows back in 2015, a group of seasoned Montreal improvisers are teaming up once again to present Camp Wanapoke, a completely unscripted live show set within the confines of the fictional summer camp in 1979.
Top 5 favourite camp movies?
Wet Hot American Summer because literally every person involved in that movie is the most hilarious/talented/sexy.
Meatballs because Bill Murray.
The Parent Trap, which is not ‘technically’ a camp movie, but there’s a scene where Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan eat oreos dunked in peanut butter, which was a huge influence on my after-school snacking.
Camp, which is basically the story of a bunch of horny musical theatre kids in the woods which I am not ashamed to admit was very relate-able growing up.
Addams Family Values, because the story Wednesday Addams tells her cabin-mates about all their old noses growing back is the most haunting campfire story of all time.
How much of each show is improvised / based on crowd suggestions?
The show is completely improvised so going into it each night we have no idea what will happen. We get a suggestion from the audience off the top and just go with it. We’ve been practicing a bit of structure with our director Vance Gillis in terms of framework in a narrative sense, just so the story progresses and there are different arcs throughout each show
What can you tell us about your character?
We don’t really have pre-established characters, except we know who will be the protagonists and the antagonists for each show. We’re such a big cast, especially for an improvised show, so we want to make sure everyone has a goal and a desire for each show. Other than that we’ll all be blank slates off the top of the show and our characters will develop throughout. We do have some special guests (Danny Belair, Paul Solomon, James McGee, Jess Fildes) coming in who will have some general ideas of the kind of character they’ll be playing.
Do your characters remain similar throughout the shows? Or do they evolve along with the situations?
The characters will be brand new at the beginning of each show and develop throughout that particular show. We have some tropes and general ideas in mind in terms of the kinds of characters that can exist within the realm of a 70s camp show, but otherwise the characters will be completely different for each show.
We’ve batted around a bunch of ideas for future shows, maybe Camp Wanapoke Does Frosh or Camp Wanapoke Band Camp. I’d love to do an 80’s prom slasher show at some point as well. There are so many genres out there that would be fun to explore, it’s hard to pick just one.
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