For the first time since the pandemic, Circus Camp is returning in person to Greenbelt, and will be helmed by Greg May. The debut return of Circus Camp takes place over spring break this month, followed by two sessions during the summer. At press time a few spaces remained for the spring break and session three camps but are likely to fill up quickly.
“I’m very excited about coming back,” May said of returning to Greenbelt’s camp lineup.
May debuted Circus Camp in Greenbelt in 2008, says Chris Cherry, performing arts coordinator for the city. During the years when May ran the camp at the Community Center, the camp was so popular that hopeful participants were often waitlisted.
With the return of Circus Camp, May is looking forward to teaching kids not just how to ride a unicycle, juggle or clown around, but also some of life’s most important and universal lessons.
“The most important thing that we ever teach will be how to fall down – that’s how to fail, literally and figuratively,” May said. “Our goal overall is to create a loving, family atmosphere where kids can grow and learn: learn how to fall, but also learn how to get back up.”
As kids get older, May noted, the lessons in perseverance they learn in Circus Camp help them in other areas of their lives, too. “When the kids square off with a three-month project in their sophomore year of high school,” May said, “and they think, ‘How can I handle something that’s going to take three months?’ The circus kids are going to say, ‘Well, it took me a year and a half to learn a unicycle, so I can get this.᾽”
Another lesson May focuses on in Circus Camp is leading with kindness.
“When we did our sessions before, we always sat the kids down and told them that there were 100 rules for circus camp,” May says. “Rules one through 99 were to be kind, and rule 100 was no gum.”
Anatomy of a Comeback
May credits Cherry for making his return to Circus Camp happen. May’s mother, Betty, died last June. She had been a theater teacher and playwright and had helped her son run Circus Camp in Greenbelt. When trying to wrap up his mother’s estate, May called Cherry and offered to donate the props and theater equipment at her home.
Cherry was glad to help, but also told May that Greenbelt would love for him to come back and do Circus Camp. For May, the suggestion led to a set of opposing emotions. First, having recently lost his mother, he yearned for something familial.
“Of all the places of work, of all the things I’ve done over the years, I’ve never felt more of a family atmosphere than at the Community Center, with the team there, and with the community there,” he said.
At the same time, the reality that May isn’t as young as he was when he first started doing the camp set in, too. “I said, ‘I don’t know,’ because it’s so unbelievably physically taxing – basically lifting kids for a living,” May said.
Cherry wasn’t pushy, but offered May some words of assurance. “He says ‘We’ll start out small,’ and ‘we’ll make sure to have some young, strong staffers there to help,’” May said of Cherry’s supportive offer.
May also learned from Cherry that, over the years, as children who’d done the camps had grown up and outgrown their unicycles or other circus equipment, they’d donated them to the Community Center. “It’s all just there and ready to rock and roll,” May said. With that in mind, May agreed to come back.
What’s in Store?
This year’s Circus Camp will look a lot like those in previous years. Participants will learn juggling, unicycle and clowning skills. Equipment like rolla bolla, a board balanced on top of a tube; the rolling globe, a large ball students stand or walk on as it rolls beneath them; and stilts will be back.
However, the camp will not be doing aerial skills, as that requires the most physicality from instructors, who have to make sure students don’t fall and get hurt. Additionally, Circus Camp is being offered one week over spring break, and only for three of the nine weeks Greenbelt is offering camps this summer: a single full, two-week session in July and a one-week session in August.
“I want to keep everybody safe,” May said. “I want to be on the absolute top of my game mentally and physically. We’re going to start out with these smaller sessions to give me a chance to recover afterwards because nothing is more important to me than being able to put my all into it.”
Cherry is happy to have May back for these few sessions, noting his “Greenbelt homecoming is both joyful and poignant.”
May is equally happy, noting that performing and helping others with circus is “like the air in my lungs. I love it with a passion.” He adds that he’s also really looking forward to being with his Greenbelt family again.
“When Chris put the bug in my ear about it, the more I thought about it, the more it felt right,” May says. “It really comes down to, I could use some family time.”