The word of the week at the Summer Spotlight camp at Troy University is “intensive.”

According to Mr. Webster, “intensive” means using or requiring large amounts of a specified thing.

Ask the participants in the Summer Spotlight Performance Intensive Camp and they will say, to a man and woman, that the “ specified thing” is “everything” – energy, creativity, time, will power, homework – “everything.”

“We’re running on about four hours of sleep,” said Savannah Renfrow, from Prattville. “Our director Roy Hudson is fantastic, but we are required to do so much. We don’t have time to catch our breath. The performance camp is ‘intensive.’”

The Summer Spotlight Performance Intensive Camp opened on Sunday and the 38 participants were fast out of the gate and off to the races.

Tonight, all they have learned during this week of intensive theater training will be under the spotlight as they present the Summer Spotlight Showcase at 7 p.m. at the Trojan Center Theater on the campus of Troy University. The Showcase performance is free and open to the public.

Adena Moree, director of theater and dance at Troy University, said the high school and Troy University freshmen theater students have been involved in classroom studies and rehearsals for tonight’s Showcase.

“We have studied all aspects of the theater, including script analysis, musical theater and acting,” she said.

“One of tonight’s stage events was developed by the group from poetry.”

A highlight of the Showcase performance will be “Faade” from the musical Jekyll and Hyde.

“In the group, we have seven Troy University theater majors who are using this opportunity for observation and to utilize their teaching skills – and to have some fun,” Moree said. “All of the students will benefit from the direction of Roy Hudson, who was the teacher of the year at Shades Valley High School where he developed the theater academy.”

Hudson is now a member of the faculty of the Troy University Department of Theater and Dance.

Renfrow, who will be a freshman at Auburn University in the fall, said the opportunity to work with Hudson has provided her with one more source before heading to The Plains.

Her schoolmate and friend, Kaitlyn Conway, agreed that working with Hudson has given her a different perspective on theater.

“This has been an opportunity to grow,” she said. “I find that sometimes I’m thinking too hard, and I need to stop and take the advice that is offered to me. Savannah and I have only worked with one director. Here at camp, we’ve learned to trust a director that we didn’t know. It’s been a great experience.”

For Bryan Benfield of Huntsville, the camp has been an opportunity to improve what he is best at – “dancing,” as well as what he is “bad” at –“singing and dancing.”

“Working with Roy Hudson is a chance to work with someone who understands me at my level and pushes me beyond my limits,” Benfield said.

“And he has done that. He’s a lot of fun and jokes with us but this camp has been a great learning experience – and very intensive.”

Tonight’s Summer Spotlight Showcase will be the culmination of a week of intensive theater training and Moree said it will be a proud performance by a group of very fine young theater students.