The Cupertino Courier

Community

Homestead High student takes star role at camp

By Stephen Baxter

School's out, and budding talents in music and theater have little to do but wait for the next school play to roll around.

For Shir Yehoshua, a rising junior at Homestead High School, summer means a three-week stint at Interlochen Arts Camp in rural Interlochen, Mich.

The 79-year-old camp has helped refine stars like Norah Jones, Jewel and Felicity Huffman, and dozens of professional orchestra musicians. Half of its 2,000 students receive financial aid, and the camp combines traditional camp activities like swimming and canoeing with violin lessons, oil painting and acting.

Yehoshua left July 15 to study musical theater, and she said she was urged to go by her grandmother, who attended the camp in 1956 and 1957.

Her grandmother, Marjorie Kaiz Offer, is an author who lives in Northbrook, Ill.

"It was the most important experience of my life," Kaiz Offer said.

"I came from a blue-collar factory town and I went into a very competitive setting ... it opened up all these vistas about the world and people and classical art," she said.

Students from 40 countries attend the camp each year, and they wear uniforms in part to equalize them. About 40 students from the Bay Area are attending the camp, and the theater program costs are roughly $775 for a week to $6,076 for six weeks.

There is also an application and audition process.

Yehoshua said she looked forward to the camp. She has acted in a school production of Our Town and recently controlled lighting for Footloose.

"I'm excited but I'm nervous ... I really like hanging out with drama people and I'm looking forward to that part of it," she said.

Computers use is forbidden, and campers sleep in cabins and eat cafeteria food. The difference is that music drifts out of rehearsal cabins impromptu gatherings.

Kaiz Offer, 65, said she met three lifelong friends at the camp, like her bunkmate, Suzy Grais, whom she has known for 51 years.

She also remembered sports at the camp, and when the principal violin in the camp orchestra hurt his finger in a baseball game.

She said, "Nothing's changed, it's still an old-fashioned experience ... the only thing you have is your talent, and they give you a level playing field."