The Improv Centre revisits summer camp mayhem in Camp What's-It-Called
Artistic director and former avid summer camper Jalen Saip tapped into her experiences for a show about the wild world of canoeing, campfires, and crushes
The Improv Centre’s Camp What’s-It-Called featuring Alex Parra (left), Mary Saunders, Cam Grant, Raf Rogers, Rachel Kent, and Helen Camisa. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt
The Improv Centre (TIC) presents Camp What’s-It-Called on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm from May 17 to July 13, with a special opening-night performance on May 16 at 7:30 pm
THE IMPROV CENTRE artistic director Jalen Saip grew up attending summer camp in Hope, B.C., packing up her tiger sleeping bag and a teddy bear for a week of canoeing, campfires, and games. As a teen, she signed up to spend the entire season at camp, doing everything from cleaning bathrooms to teaching kayaking. She clearly remembers one incident, when she was 17, at the camp on Kawkawa Lake, which is glacier-fed.
“I was always a strong swimmer, so I signed up to be part of the dive squad to do safety checks, but also to impress one of the other leaders who I had a crush on,” Saip tells Stir. “Once, we did a count of camper tags and noticed there was one less person on the dock than tags—it turns out the kid was in the tuck shop—so I had to do the dive fully clothed. Water got locked in my ear and I nearly drowned, but the guy I liked asked me to be his grad date so I guess it all worked out.”
Jalen Saip.
Saip figured that the adventures of those care-free days would make perfect fodder for an improv show: Camp What’s-It-Called is TIC’s feature presentation this spring and summer. An audience member will be introduced in the second half of the show, which features a multitude of characters and camp tropes to play off of.
“I thought that it would be a lot of fun to create a summer-camp show so that we could explore the wild and wonderful world of the great outdoors, while also giving the perfect backdrop for all sorts of relationships to form—friendships, frenemies, crushes, arch rivals, and the like.
“As most people know, improv is entirely made up on the spot,” Saip adds. “One way to ensure that we don’t pre-plan what will happen is to work with someone we’ve never met before. So we will be bringing up an audience volunteer to help us tell the story each night. Improv is all about being inspired by audience members and bringing their ideas—or perhaps their own memories—to life. It’s also a lot of fun to bring camp into the world of improv because we love playing different characters, and anyone who ever went to or worked at camp knows that they are full of characters.” 
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