Penh Lo, director of Pan-Asian student services at Augsburg, started the leadership survival camp last year as a way to give Augsburg student leaders a unique opportunity to discover nature and also to gain insight into their roles as leaders.

From Thursday to Sunday, students canoe, hunt and fish for their food, and participate in some challenging survival simulations. In one drill, they capsize a canoe and learn how to tip it back up. “In the midst of this,” Lo said, “I go out and tell them I can save one person who they pick.” After the simulation, the group talks about why they saved the person they chose. “This leads to discussion about why we choose people to work with us and about relationships and leadership,” he said.

On the last day, participants do a 20-30 mile canoe trip navigating with a map and compass. “They have to find me or else they don’t have lunch because I take the food with me,” Lo said.

All activities wrap up with discussion about what went well and what didn’t, about how the group worked together and what they could have done differently. Lo said he has been taking many males, mostly first-year students and students he meets in his work. “So we also talk about what it means to be a man and about developing as responsible individuals.”

At the end of the journey, the participants reflect on their last academic year and set one goal for the coming year. “We say it out loud,” Lo said, “because once we say it publicly, that’s where the accountability comes in.”

Zong Her was one of the students who attended this year. He wrote, “This trip challenged me physically as well as tested my mental will and ability to work together effectively in a group. With the honest feedback of my supporting peers I learned more about myself as an individual, a teammate, and a leader.”

Houa Lor, the Day student body president for 2011-12, reflected on his experience. “No food, no water, no dry clothes, lots of ticks, fatigue, dehydrated, no shelter, dangerous bears, and miles away from civilization on a secluded area. Survival Camp was not just all about surviving on limited food…. I was transformed by the relationships I made over the weekend, discovered a part of myself, and learned how one’s role can influence the lives of other people.”

See more photos from the 2011 Leadership Survival Camp on the group’s Facebook .

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Written by Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus told from the point of view of Eurydice, his wife. “It’s almost like a dream,” Johnson said. “The play uses images you would only see in a dream but is also very human. There’s a little bit of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in it.” Johnson believes patrons will appreciate the contemporary humor, Ruhl’s ability to play with language, and the unusual set designed by Joe Stanley.

Johnson calls Eurydice a poignant and humorous exploration of death, loss, and memory. Written when Ruhl was grieving the loss of her father to cancer, the play focuses both on the relationship between husband and wife as well as on Eurydice’s relationship with her father. Ruhl used the play to imagine what would happen if Eurydice met her father in the underworld, since he had been dead at the time of her wedding, in the underworld.

The role of Eurydice is played by Shannon O’Brien, a sophomore theatre major whose father, Paul O’Brien, is also an actor and a student in the Augsburg MBA program.

“I wanted to become an actress because of my father,” Shannon said. “I saw him in Amadeus at the Guthrie when I was in middle school, and I fell in love with the theatre.” Paul offers advice when his daughter asks for it and helps her memorize lines but says he tries to stay out of her way. “She is doing things that are very tough, being a student and playing the lead in the play,” he says. “I just try to be there and be a supportive dad.”

Paul learned about Augsburg’s MBA program when he brought his daughter to campus to begin her first year. After he was accepted into the program, she told him not to expect to see her every time he was on campus. “In my first year, this was kind of my territory,” she said, but soon she came to enjoy seeing her father at Augsburg. The pair has dinner together every Monday before Paul goes to class and Shannon goes to rehearsal. “All my friends love him.”

Shannon builds on the close relationship with her father in her role as Eurydice. “Toward the end of the play when my father and I are in the underworld, he is bringing me to Orpheus and we are walking down an imaginary aisle as though at my wedding. At that time, I think about what it would be like to lose my dad,” she said. Her father, who lives with multiple sclerosis, said “Every father dreams of walking his daughter down the aisle. Because I have MS, that is uncertain.”

Performances of Eurydice are Oct. 31, Nov. 1, 6, and 8 at 7 p.m., and Nov. 2, 8, and 9 at 2 p.m. in Tjornhom-Nelson Theater in Foss Center. Tickets are $10 general public; $8 ACTC, faculty, staff, and students; $2 Augsburg students and children under age 12. For reservations or other information, call 612-330-1257.

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