Summer camp can feel a little like a cult, with its songs, special language, lore, weird rituals, all set in deep woods that isolate campers from the outside world while promising back-to-nature idealism.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Grown-Ups,\u201d now in a Theatre Lunatico production, playwrights Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques evince an anthropologist\u2019s understanding of these dynamics, but they communicate it with a keen ear for dialogue. One counselor calls the first day of camp \u201corientaysh.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
They also envision a news-cycle story, happening at the same time as camp, that\u2019s so bonkers it feels like it could happen any minute. It\u2019s involves a meme about Dwayne \u201cthe Rock\u201d Johnson and a pineapple that politicians hijack as the latest front line in the culture wars. Campers\u2019 parents form \u201ctruth squads\u201d that threaten the camp idyll, all of which puts exogenous pressure on counselors \u2014 adolescents who are trying to delay real jobs as long as possible.<\/p>\n
The question becomes whether they can preserve camp as a \u201csafe, sacred space\u201d or whether letting the outside world in will erode the trust that holds it together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summer camp can feel a little like a cult, with its songs, special language, lore, weird rituals, all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[329,7,35717,332,143,145,144,1058],"class_list":["post-300823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-california","tag-datebook-pick","tag-east-bay","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}