Sixty kids brimming with energy and ideas in the crucible of a summer performing arts intensive crafted four unique productions that resonated with Bermuda’s youth.“It’s going to be something to watch,” promised Just Misfits, one of the four teams into which the young people were divided, when The Royal Gazette looked in on rehearsals on July 8.The Bermuda Glee programme, which took place at The Berkeley Institute, was sponsored by the Argo Foundation and presented two performances of the four short plays on Sunday, July 10. Feedback on each of the plays was given by panellists Rebecca Faulkenberry and Daren Herbert.Each team (Essence, Just Misfits, SWAG, Unify) comprised 15 young people. They wrote, choreographed and directed their own 15-minute production with minimal supervision of four local drama teachers and the help of a seven-man production team.Malachi Simmons of team SWAG, (Super Wicked Awesome Group), has come away from the experience with a better appreciation of “just how multi-talented so many young Bermudians are.”The consensus among the groups was that “working with different people with different talents” was one of the highlights of the two weeks.As Sophia Williams noted of her group, “Even though we didn’t know each other, we worked together within seconds. We came together to make one big performance.”An eye-opener for Andrew Sussman was “just how difficult it is to create a piece from scratch.Every second has to be choreographed, so even a 15-minute piece feels longer.”An example of the collaborative effort was how the choreography for the Just Misfits’ performance came together. ‘What have you heard?’ had as its theme “rumours basically”. “It’s a comic play,” explained Sierra Symonds, “but explores in depth about how rumours affect people, and teenagers in particular.”The music they chose was ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga, though they changed the lyrics to suit their theme of rumours spreading.“Then each person went home and created some choreography,” explained Marcus Smith, “and then we just mashed it all together when we got back the next day.”The creative process had its challenges, however, as Nathaniel Sussman of Just Misfits acknowledged. “We took longer than all the other groups to get the script and plot sorted out along with the choreography and music.”“It took so long,” explained Chiante Roberts, “because we had so many ideas that we had to weed out what we wanted before we wrote the script.”But when things all came together, there was a real sense of achievement.For team SWAG, whose play was entitled ‘Dreams are Real’, the challenge was slightly different.Theirs was an ensemble piece, with every character having a story to tell, and according to Andrienne Miller, “Surprisingly we managed to agree on everything. I’d say the challenge was to find the energy to rehearse over and over again.”Team Essence explored the topical issue of budget cuts and the impact on a school’s music programme, while Team Unify’s performance featured Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’ and focused on the issue of judgment and the need to judge only oneself.In sum, the successful inaugural performing arts intensive pushed the participants beyond their comfort zones.For Gari-Lyn DeShield, who had applied on the basis of her interest in singing, spoke for many when she said “Having to act and dance helped me to discover talents I didn’t know I had.”