OTC Virtual Winter Camp 2023 Creative Workshops For Teens
Dec 2023 Winter Classes
Student Activism: The Teens Have the Power!
Dec. 16, 4-6 pm EST
Teachers: Alexa and Stove
Alexa has been at camp for over 10 years as a camper and staff member. They are also an amendment participant in Mutual Aid efforts, particularly during disasters, with a special place in their heart for collective learning and skill sharing. They live with their grandma and their kitty named Chicken in NY for most parts of the year.
Stove is a trans and nonbinary organizer, fundraiser, and teacher, currently based in Guadalajara, Mexico. Coming from a communications background, they have worked in queer and trans health centers, trans asylum organizations, and other nonprofits. They have managed a variety of projects, including volunteer recruitment, grassroots fundraising, and social media campaigns. They are currently living in Mexico, teaching English with the hopes of returning to NYC to work with collectives supporting recently arrived migrants from the Global South.
Summary: Young people often have the most insightful voices when it comes to changes in our world. In this class, we will talk about the meaning of ‘power’ and how to analyze a power structure. We will also look at some examples of the way students have reclaimed power and participated in movements in the past, and brainstorm ways to harness that power now!
Transforming Diary Entries into Narratives
Dec. 17, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Arti Arti Gollapudi
Arti Gollapudi is a Brooklyn based first generation Indian woman who is a writer and performer with a bachelor of music from Berklee College of Music and a Masters of Arts in performance studies from NYU Tisch. Her work focuses on using personal narrative as a way to open up dialogue about identity.
Summary: In this workshop, we will be learning how to make our everyday diary entries into more formative writing. We will be thinking about how to turn our everyday life into stories of any form- perhaps a poem or a graphic novel or a fun short story or… anything else. Turn your memories into ART!
Thanatology: The Culture of Death and Dying
Dec. 18, 4-6 pm EST (recommended for 15+)
Teacher: Yolpie Kaiser
Yolpie Kaiser is a death educator, hospice worker, and caregiver living in Oakland, CA. They have worked with Odyssey Teen Camp for just short of a decade, teaching high-energy silly improv classes as well as heartfelt discussion and meditation classes. They’re incredibly excited to connect with campers, both new and old, in our virtual classes this winter.
Summary: Have you ever wondered where our rituals of remembering our dead come from or been curious about how people commemorate the dead in other places? What about all of the innovative and interesting choices that can be made about what to do with a body after someone dies? In this two-hour class about the cultural and scientific study of death and dying, we’ll talk about those topics and many more, such as ethics, stigma, creating new rituals, the creation of dying as a money-making industry, avoidance of death in Western society and how to get comfortable thinking about mortality! Please join me and remember to bring an open heart, mind, and perhaps a box of tissues!
Chopped: Teen Edition
Dec. 19, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Julie Saha
Julie Saha is a self-taught chef and artist using food as a creative medium. She believes that cooking is an interdisciplinary practice that connects art, community, culture and self. She has been a member of the OTC community since 2013!
Summary: New season of Chopped just dropped…and you’re the star! Tap into your creative chef energy and make something amazing from 4-basket ingredients and your home pantry. This class is a competition, discussion, and learning opportunity all in one. Winner of the competition wins a free OTC hat! Ingredients will be posted a week in advance (This is not strict! Make substitutions as needed. This class is about exercising our creativity and expanding our palates).
Experiments in Moving and Writing Scores
Dec. 20, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Ryen
Ryen Heart is an interdisciplinary artist based in Ridgewood, Queens. They have been making performances, installations, and ceramics for the past ten years. Ryen is obsessed with hyperpresence and the invisible. They are studying to be a somatic experiencing practitioner and death doula and teach movement and meditation to people of all ages.
Summary: What is presence? Drawing from heart’s movement practice as well as from techniques spanning shaking, somatic experiencing, visualizations, emergent improvisation, and Lecoq clowning, we will spend time exploring the vast spectrum of our “presence” and how it affects the ways we move. This will be a lab for experimentation and you will leave having written (and maybe even shared) a movement score!
Comedy School with Jamel Johnson
Dec. 21, 4-5:30 pm EST
Teacher: Jamel Johnson
Jamel Johnson is an LA-based comedian best known for his podcasts, The Brandon Jamel Show, Airbuds, and Sorry We Love Football. You’ve seen him on Comedy Central, Kevin Hart Presents: Hart of the City, and was one of Vulture Magazine’s Comedians You Can & Should Know of 2021. He performs regularly at comedy clubs across the country.
Summary: Interested in starting your own podcast? Wondering if stand-up is for you? This class dives into the basics of joke writing, sketch comedy, and podcasting. See you there or the jokes on you…
Find Your Drawing Style
Dec. 22, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Anais
Anais is an artist living in New York City and has been a part of the OTC community since 2013. When she’s not having fun at summer camp, Anais is busy working in the clay studio or riding her bike through the park. You might recognize her art from all of our OTC merch and mascots!
Summary: Together, we will explore new ways to spark creativity through simple drawing exercises and finish our time together by creating a collaborative drawing. Let’s use the power of community to inspire each other’s individual artistic journeys and leave this class feeling refreshed with new ideas and motivation. Bring your sketchbook/paper and a few of your favorite drawing utensils. See you there.
Scream Time: What Makes a Horror Movie?
Dec. 27, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Louisa
Summary: Through group discussion and movie clip analysis, this class dives into the creation of your favorite horror movies. From conception to staging to execution, we will break down the process that makes a successful horror film. See you there, scream queens!
Louisa Grenham is an LA-based writer and filmmaker with a passion for horror and dark comedy. They have worked in script development and screenwriting, and recently directed a short film that is currently in post-production. In their own writing, they love to bring humor into the mundane experience of adult life.
Queer SciFi: Empowerment in Imagination
Dec. 28, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Ruby
Ruby has spent 2 years at OTC as the Birch Valley pod leader. She is an artist and community organizer in so-called Massachusetts. The powers of friendship, community, and personal growth that she has witnessed at OTC continues to inspire her to dream of a kinder future for the world we all share.
Summary: Discussing empowerment and imagination, distant worlds that are closer than they seem, cool outfits, otherness, shapeshifters, dystopias, utopias, and armageddons.
A Poem is a (love) Letter
Dec. 29, 4-6 pm EST
Teacher: Alex
Alex Patrick Dyck is a multimedia poet, frog man, storyteller, performer & medicine maker; a romantic hoarder of sentimental trash and trampled roses, an altar builder, memory gatherer, a seeker seeking. They see art-making as resistance and as play: in all manners, an act of devotion. They live, work and grow in Hudson, New York on occupied Mohican land.
Summary: Exploring poetic letter-writing and how to play with communication and form. Everything is a poem! Poetry is everywhere!