Young Chang
Camille Kazempoor has literally hung up her dancing shoes. In her
bedroom, where she sleeps beneath a lavender home-made canopy among
stuffed animals and the light of a star-studded lamp, her worn ballet
shoes line the rim of a framed painting.
The 9-year-old's personal style is as feminine as her room. She wears
a glittered navy blue headband, a 1970s-style white top with pink
embroidering and flared cargo jeans. She has a small gold hoop in each
ear. Her hair is straight and falls to her shoulders neatly combed.
She is pretty and petite. A girlie girl. Except onstage. There, she is
a boy.
Camille alternates the role of Tiny Tim with Gregory Swanson, 8, in
this year's production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" at South
Coast Repertory.
The Newport Coast resident said she didn't think twice about
auditioning for the role of a boy. The setting of the play -- mid-1800s
England -- was so foreign to begin with, Camille said she didn't think a
gender-change was anything to consider.
"I just enjoy acting," she said.
For Camille, who wears boy's clothes complete with a bow-tie and gauge
wrap around the leg to look like Tiny Tim, the performance is never
anything to get nervous about.
"I'm getting better and better," Camille said, "The more I do it, I
remember more and I get more comfortable."
Director John-David Keller, returning to the show for his 21st year,
said the actress is a "terrific Tiny Tim" who disproves the notion that
young children have identity problems playing the opposite sex.
"A Christmas Carol," which has played every year since 1980 at SCR,
opened this week and will continue through Dec. 24 on the mainstage. Hal
London returns this year as Ebenezer Scrooge, a role he has played at SCR
since the beginning.
London said the "repugnant, reprehensible miser" Scrooge, who is
visited by three spirits and shown his past, present and possible future,
is a role that continues to fascinate him.
"It is a little bit different each year," he said. "I think I bring,
to some degree, my own experiences that change the way I see the
character . . . And sometimes I see him differently each night."
Eight local students from SCR's Young Conservatory, including Camille,
are part of the cast: Alexander Scholnick of Corona del Mar, Carlos
Ibarra and Amy Barklow of Costa Mesa, Sydney Nikols of Newport Beach and
siblings Alexander, Gregory and Natasha Swanson of Newport Beach.
The Swansons are in two different casts for the show, said Kathy
Swanson, the trio's mother.
