In Spring 2024, the JMG Traveling Theater partnered with guest artists Nicole B. Adkins and Scottie Rowell to develop Let’s Go Camping!, a 45-minute interactive play designed for 2 to 5-year-olds. Let’s Go Camping! follows best friends Happy Camper and Fuzzy on a camping adventure, told through music, puppetry, and creative play! Along the way, children will explore the wonders of nature, meet woodland friends, and earn Junior Explorer badges.
Let’s Go Camping! premiered with students in the “TYA and Communities” course.
This production marked our first play designed to go bedside, allowing us to better engage with patients with reduced mobility or isolation requirements. Performing bedside helped us solidify our value of transforming institutional spaces into imaginative worlds of whimsy and play. Additionally, this play served our partner hospitals’ needs for increased early childhood programming. Finally, this play deepened our engagement with UCF Nursing students, as the script called for facilitators to support patients at specific moments throughout the show—a role filled by both Theatre and Nursing students.
In addition to performing at children’s hospitals, Let’s Go Camping! performed at Amazing Explorer’s Academy, UCF Celebrates the Arts, and Kids Fringe at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. Let’s Go Camping! will return in Spring 2025.
Let’s Go Camping audio play
This audio version of Let’s Go Camping! allows children to relive the adventure, and provides a theatre-based performance to patients in isolation. Based on the play ‘Let’s Go Camping!’ Written by Nicole B. Adkins & Elizabeth Brendel Horn, Lyrics by Nicole B. Adkins, Music by Scottie Rowell. Adapted, Engineered, and Performed by Scottie Rowell. Sound Effects by Pixabay.
Learn more about Let’s Go Camping!
Written by: Nicole B. Adkins and Elizabeth Brendel Horn
Lyrics by: Nicole B. Adkins
Music and Design by: Scottie Rowell
Puppetry and Fabrication by: Teller Productions
Music Director: Bethany Post
Dramaturgy: Julia Veiga