Hot Springs venue to bring theater camp for adults with special needs to Black Mountain

HOT SPRINGS - Hot Springs and Black Mountain are teaming up to offer a theater camp for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

When Rare Bird Farm founder Farrah Hoffmire and her husband Mitchell Davis came to Madison County, one of Hoffmire's top priorities was to continue her work with adults with disabilities through the arts. In Charleston, South Carolina, Hoffmire founded Inclusive Arts Community in 2014.

Now, that dream is a reality for Hoffmire, as the camp will take place Sept. 26-29.

"We're very excited," Hoffmire said. "It's been a long time coming, for sure. We'll produce a show on Sunday at 2 p.m., and we'll invite the public, and families and caregivers."

Rare Bird Farm Inclusive Theatre Camp will offer personalized performing arts mentorship for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. With a team of 12 volunteer artists and two professional teaching artists, campers collaborate with mentors to craft distinctive roles, enabling the team to showcase both individual and collective talents.

As this will be the camp's first year, Hoffmire said she has scaled it back.

"It's starting off way smaller," she said. "The program in Charleston is a day program and happens every Tuesday and Thursday, all day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. So we had time to create a musical together, and we would create a workshop show in six months. And then we'd bring it to the big stage with a full year of rehearsals under our belt and up to 600 people in attendance at the Charleston Music Hall. It was big."

In its inaugural year, Rare Bird Farm has teamed up with Christmount Christian Assembly in Black Mountain, which will host the campers overnight and for the public performance. Christmount is a retreat, camp and conference center situated on roughly 600 acres in Black Mountain.

Jon Blalock is Christmount's program director, including serving in that role for Camp Lakey Gap, a six week-long residential camp for people on the autism spectrum, as well as for Sunshine Retreats for adults with developmental disabilities.

Blalock said teaming up with Rare Bird Farm could be a momentous union in that Western North Carolina is typically underresourced with regards to funding for programming for children and adults with special needs as compared to other areas in the state, such as Charlotte.

"It's very exciting to know that the opportunities for people with disabilities in the area continues to grow," Blalock said. "It's exciting that people like Farrah are moving into the area and bringing with them these ideas for inclusion in various realms of experience. Specifically with the theater camp, I think one of the things that excites me about it is that it is an opportunity for people with disabilities to have an intensive and focused, concentrated experience centered around the dramatic arts.

"I feel like there's a lot of potential there for the creation of community. If I were to think about a product that we're trying to dispense as a nonprofit organization, that product would be community, because you can come to a camp, but that's one week out of 52, and then the rest of the year, these folks are in their home settings. But hopefully, what they've taken with them from participation in programs like Rare Bird are relationships and experiences that are enriching."

Although Christmount is the National Conference Center for the Disciples of Christ denomination, all of its programs for people with disabilities are secular, meaning they have no religious content.

"That's important, because it allows us to have a wider range of people that would deem our program appropriate," Blalock said. "There are already so many limitations placed on people in terms of where they participate. We feel it's important that our program remain secular so as not to discourage anyone that's not belonging to that Christian faith."

Sharvis Smith will serve as one of the professional teaching artists, and has appeared in performances at Asheville Community Theatre, including Ms. Honey in "Matilda the Musical," and worked with the Tanglewood Summer Camp this summer.

Smith said bringing visibility and representation to the campers is one of the main reasons he is working with the theater camp.

"I wanted to get involved in this camp because I believe everyone should have a chance to experience the arts, whether it be watching as a member of the audience, helping behind the scenes, and/or as an on-stage performer," Smith said.

According to Hoffmire, Rare Bird Inclusive Theatre Camp is the beginning of a larger vision that will create belonging for adults with and without disabilities.

"I wanted to start small and let the experience inform the next steps," she said. "The overarching mission is to create lasting friendships between artists with and without disabilities through artistic collaboration."

At the September Inclusive Theatre Camp, Hoffmire plans to host 12 campers.

James Bethea will be one of the 12 campers. Bethea, who is from Charleston, South Carolina, met Hoffmire in 2012 and attended HEART since its foundation in 2014.

"This year, there will be script writing, music and play, storytelling around the fire, and more," Bethea said, adding that he is most looking forward to being a narrator and emcee.

At HEART, Bethea typically served as the narrator during the annual plays. Bethea also played Steve Jobs in one of HEART's play productions.

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Amy Deaton is James Bethea's mother.

According to Deaton, the Inclusive Theatre Camp can help build community among adults with special needs.

"When you have a child with special needs and you're involved in the school system, you have that as your whole community base, and you think that when the children all grow into adulthood, you think that will community will last when they're adults and out of the school system, and it doesn't," Deaton said. "Everyone is kind of forging their own way. It's still up to the parents to make that social life continue. And it's work."

Deaton said a camp such as Rare Bird Inclusive Theatre Camp "creates a new adult community" so that "they have a new world of their own," for adults with special needs.

Similar to Blalock, Deaton said one aspect about what Hoffmire has done that is most encouraging is how different it is from other more conventional programs available to that demographic.

"The creativity of what Farrah and Mitchell are offering, and the diversity, they were just doing everything - they were out in the community," Deaton said. "The camp provides an opportunity for the participants to explore creativity in the world of theater and art and music and storytelling and then present to the community a performance to showcase what they have done.

"Those attending the performance will be able to see firsthand how hard they work, how well they perform and how much fun they have."

But Deaton said camps such as Rare Bird Farm Inclusive Theatre Camp can help unify a community as a whole, while also bringing increased representation to adults with special needs.

"In a community that hasn't had exposure, I think it will be a huge learning experience for everybody that's involved," Deaton said. "It will give whatever your community of special needs is an opportunity to get to know other people in the community, and for people to get comfortable with one another. So, as we all know, as you're exposed to something and become more comfortable with it, it's just enlightening for everybody, and it's a new growth for everybody else."

Mandy Dausener is a camp volunteer who also worked with Hoffmire volunteering at HEART Inclusive Arts Community. Dausener is a special education teacher who now lives in Haywood County.

Dausener said she is thrilled that Farrah is bringing her skills and passion to Western North Carolina.

"With HEART, she created an incredibly meaningful and engaging community. There is a dearth of opportunities for such for adults with disabilities," Dausener said. "HEART under Farrah’s leadership provided a vibrant and vital place of real connection and growth for people with varied abilities. I feel blessed to have been a part of that, and to get to be part of this new endeavor of Farrah‘s. She is so gifted at bringing people together and helping people hone their innate talents."

Blalock said he's excited about the opportunity for the campers to put on an event which some attendees may be seeing for the first time, especially as there continues to be a deficit in programming for adults with disabilities.

"People with disabilities are individuals, and they have various needs and interests," Blalock said. "There are a couple of programs that do art that are more like media art, like painting and drawing. Just like not every person without disabilities wants to go to a painting class, not everybody with disabilities wants to go to a painting class. So, the wider range of opportunity we have will allow for a wider range of people to access those, because they have varying interests."

Blalock hopes the Inclusive Theater Camp will have a similar effect not only on the campers and their families, but on the entire community, and added that he hopes Christmount has the opportunity to work with other like-minded organizations such as Rare Bird Farm.

"We're looking for any other organizations that have similar missions that are wanting to collaborate on similar projects," Blalock said.

For campers and their family alike, there is a lot of excitement heading into the end-of-September weekend.

"It's a win-win for everyone," Deaton said. "Learning about one another's gifts and strengths potentially creates more acceptance, more constructive interaction, and more enthusiasm for creating a stronger, more engaged community."

For more information on Rare Bird Inclusive Theatre Camp, visit the website : rarebirdfarm.org/camp-rare-bird.

Johnny Casey has covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for three years. He earned a first-place award in beat news reporting in the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com .

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Hot Springs venue to bring theater camp for adults with special needs to Black Mountain