There are several components of camp SAY that give it the aesthetic of your ordinary, straight out of an 80s movie summer camp. The lakeside backdrop is there to give us an ideal scenic setting. A rustic mess hall acts as a hub, filled to the brim and bursting with juvenile energy as you would expect mid-summer. Setting it apart, however, is the specific vision conceived and spearheaded by Taro Alexander, a professional actor with both a stutter and an abundance of empathy. My Beautiful Stutter follows a group of stuttering youth as they spend an unforgettable couple of months at SAY (The Stuttering Association for the Young), designed by Taro as a safe space for young stutterers to meet and bond with each other as a collective unit.
The program honors what can be a very isolating setback to live with, and encourages the building of kinship with others who continue to face similar hardships. At its core, SAY is part of a larger effort to guide these stutterers towards self-love and tolerance for their speech, so that they will be best equipped to lead successful lives growing up. Nothing short of a tall order, but one the organization works at with a never-ending supply of smiles, along with attentive sets of ears.
Right off the bat, and selfishly speaking, getting a glimpse of life at Camp Say evoked pangs of jealousy in my now 24-year-old self. The inventive curriculum designed for the campers reflects a focus on creativity and self-expression. Original skits, improvised concerts, and other theatrically grounded types of exercises are reflective of an effort to bring everybody out of their shells. The artistic aspect alone is enough to make me question any schematics of time machines. But the purpose of SAY goes beyond providing a few months of fun, and the film makes no mistake in capturing that. It quickly becomes evident that Taro chose the arts as a basis for the camp not strictly because it was his passion, but because he understands that participating in the field can in fact equate to the strengthening of one’s self-esteem.
We focus on a select group of campers, ages ranging from 9 to 18, who let their stories effortlessly bleed through any surface-level ideas of stuttering. I chalk this up to the earnest emotions we can count on from children, combined with the efforts of Taro and his team to provide an easy conduit for said feelings. After all, that’s really what the documentary is all about. Troves of emotions, arising in all different forms, originating from all kinds of stutterers. There are more of them to be realized than most non-stuttering viewers would ever assume. For me, the focus on a ” wide spectrum of stuttering” is what stood out as the inner heart and soul of the movie. This idea of someone’s stutter being their unique property, with a diverse range of side-effects, patterns, and attitudes that change from one stutterer to the next. It’s not a world-altering concept, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t at risk of being lost in translation. Or hardly recognized, at all.
The most beautiful parts of My Beautiful Stutter come when it displays the nuances that live between the words and thoughts of these kids. Any non-fiction, stutter-oriented piece of cinema should strive to battle stereotypes and generalizations made popular by the public. Something that the film more than managed to achieve. Each featured member of the camp ensemble gets a chance to show us that there are frequencies to speech impediments. Different levels that do not have to have to correlate for the largest part with embarrassment or shame, though it’s true that so many do. Still, we watch as some begin to embrace the spontaneity of stuttering with resolve and motivation that goes far beyond their years. And we’re right alongside the ones who find it more comfortable to hang their heads, for now, feeling the exhaustive weight of having to live in constant fear of their own voice.
Seeing different types of stutterers in one place, similar and yet so different, and experiencing the impact they all had on one another felt like a gift. A missed present stuck behind the Christmas tree for years now. Something I knew I still wanted, but nonetheless never thought would actually appear. Graciously welcome, but a painfully overdue package for us stutterers out there. I’ve never been able to identify with such a wholly encompassing tribute to my disability. This was created especially for people like me, but even if I was a fluent speaker, I’d have no choice but to laud the film for candidly examining such an under-discussed topic.
If you take the time to sit down and watch My Beautiful Stutter, my hope is that you soak in all of the wonderfully strong campers, their backgrounds, and, of course, their stutters. By focusing your thoughts less on the “why” of stuttering, you’re allowing yourself the capacity to appreciate how amazingly individualized the “what” is. Because a stutter, like any other admirable trait, is nothing without the person bringing life to it. So you might as well take a page from the book of leaders like Taro and his peers from the SAY organization, and open yourself up to the depth waiting to be found in someone else’s differences. I’m betting that, whatever you discover, it will be something beautiful.
5 stutters out of 5. (Stars, if you’re of the boring sort.)
Clicking on the link below will take you to the My Beautiful Stutter website, where you will find information on upcoming, virtual screenings! In addition, it was recently announced that the film will see a January release via Discovery+, a new app by the Discovery Channel.