queering summer camp!

The Robbers Cave psychological experiment, taking place in 1954 under the supervision of psychologist Muzafer Sherif, aimed to understand the relationships between two groups of participants when separated and then brought together. These participants were twenty-four “normal” eleven-year-old boys from Arizona, bussed to Robbers Cave National Park and permitted to befriend one another. In an effort to standardize his experiment and control any outstanding factors, Sherif specifically recruited boys who were White, middle-class, sociable, and Protestant, among other descriptors.

When I committed to writing a play for the Mermaid Players’ First-Year Play Festival, I had a general idea of how I wanted to approach the Robbers Cave experiment. Influenced by works such as Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, I knew I wanted to work creatively beyond the confines of Sherif’s narrow population. The experiment, whose outcomes are often compared to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, has been widely applied within the field of social psychology, although these results represent a rather minute section of the larger population. Everland, then, functions to take this isolated experiment and apply it to a more diverse, contemporary group of performers and audience members.

Everland is set at an unnamed summer camp and features four campers: Mason, Craig, Cutler, and River. These boys are supervised by the unnamed Counselor, a force written to represent the broader influence of society on the impressionable next generation: in other words, the normal. At odds most directly with normalcy is River, a boy whose embrace of his emotions and desire to prioritize friendship earn him scrutiny. The Counselor, in response to River’s frustration at his treatment, only tells him that “summer camp is for brave boys” and that “if [he wants] the other campers to treat [him] well, [he has] to play their game,” (Booth 3).

On a surface level, this shallow acknowledgment of toxic masculinity does not do much for the audience. However, this play was finished following casting decisions, and the actor portraying River—my dear friend Forrest—very much felt that his gender identity greatly influenced how he approached the role. Thus, I began to explore River’s potential as a force that queers the narrative of Everland. Within the confines of an experiment designed to function within the “normal,” what does it mean for queerness to embed itself into the narrative? How do characters rebel against the normalcy forced upon them?

With this information, River moves away from being a sacrificial lamb and becomes a more significant narrative force. Through Mason, Craig, and Cutler’s interactions with him, they are made to question their own understandings of just how fulfilling “normal” really is. Cutler questions River’s motives in writing home, but softens his harsher attitude, ultimately concluding that he “[doesn’t] wanna see them be mean to [him]” (2). Mason, shortly after critiquing River’s performance as a catcher, confesses in his nightly prayer that he “[doesn’t] know if [they] can win without [River]” and asks for forgiveness (4). Ultimately, these characters become more three-dimensional as a direct result of River’s queerness. His refusal to conform enriches the narrative, directly expressing the consequence of the Counselor’s “normalcy.”