Thursday 15 November 2012

CCD Symposium (18/9/12)


Day 2 
Alvin Tan – The Necessary Stage Singapore
Uniquely Singapore

Activity 1: Find a spot in the room, walk to the spot with eyes close. Arms up to protect yourself from banging onto each other.

Activity 2: A and B. A do a sound that B can identify. B close eyes with arms up. A has to lead B with their sounds. B has to identify and follow.

Acitivy 3: A and B. Two straight lines. Do a mirror image of A’s pose. 10 secs. B cannot try the pose. Then After 10 secs, B do the action. Layer: Twos, and Fours

Activity 4: One straight line. Hands on each other shoulders. Specs out. Using your hands, feel the person’s facial features in front of you. In one straight line. The first person leads the line. Eyes closed. Break free. Now, find back the person of that is standing in front of you.

Activity 5: Card games – Using no. 1 – 10. Choose a card. 1 represents the least. 10 represent the best. Without seeing your card, put it on your forehead so that others can see. Base on the no., treat the person according to that. Then, on the scale, arrange yourself what u think ur no. is.

Activity 6: With scenarios. Take a card and put on forehead. Two volunteers. Taxi and Doctor scenes. Base on how the other party treats you, find out the no. on your head.

Activity 7: SPICE. Self-development on characters and personality. Get to know their individual personality better. Builds their character. By impersonating or creating characters, they explore the different characters and may even find their ‘self’. Builds their improvisational skills. Aspects of individual:
S – Spiritual
P – Physical
I – Intellect
C – Cultural
E – Emotional

Theater for Young People
Going for the symposium was an enriching experience for me. I get to see the director of TTNS, Alvin Tan. I was quite excited to see him because he directed a few plays such as the ‘Singapore’, by Haresh Sharma, which I watched last year. And to get to learn a few ideas and pointers from him is really a privilege. The activities, which he explained, are a warm up and get-to-know-you activities. It makes the script performance easier because people know each other better through these games. It creates a comfortable and familiar environment for people to work together.

It was interesting how Alvin did the layers by increasing the difficulties and levels. I felt these activities could help build rapport with the students that I might be working with in future. 

He also introduces various projects and theatrical plays that he directed and worked with. He focused on working with original works of intercultural theatre, most of them found in Asian theatre. These works had themes, which aim to deal with problems concerning the mixture of cultures. Singapore is a migrant country, where our ancestors came from many different countries. Hence, we do not really have a one true Singaporean today because it is made up of many cultures and races, so we may have Singaporean Chinese, Singaporean Malay, etc. Whereas in Japan for example, the people are called true Japanese, because they are the natives of the land itself. The reason why he wanted to work with intercultural theatre was because he wanted a Singaporean voice, a voice that is made up of many different kinds of languages, practices and speeches. This uniqueness of Singapore is then brought out.
In the 1970s or earlier, Alvin explained that acting is only for English speaking people. Native language, dialects and other mothertongue languages were not considered as acting. Our Singaporean identity was not brought out. He wanted to promote the uniqueness and identity of Singapore through intercultural plays because Singaporeans are not well aware of our strengths yet. The media is always portraying good English, which hinders our growth and pride of our multi-cultural and intercultural society.

Interculturalism is not a bad thing because we learn the different cultural practices of one another. There is deeper mutual understanding and harmony within the different races and cultural groups. Understanding others requires love and patience, not tolerance. Tolerance has a limit or breaking point with a little hint of reluctance maybe while patience, acted from love, does not. We look at different perspectives and views through sharing and learning.

Some of the theatrical plays he introduced:
-       Theatre that touches the heart and mind
-       Fundamentally Happy
-       Gemuk Girls
-       God Eat God

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Reflection Journal 11 (14/11/12)


Conclusion

'Every talent is a measure of gold' - Dr Eugene, I. from NIE, Improvisation lesson (Music)

I totally love this statement because we are all given talents that we can invest in the lives of other people. We are blessed with talents that are considered gold. When we invest our gold in other things, we see multiple of it. For eg, investing gold in a bank may reap more gold. However, some times our investment might not reap back what we expect. It may be lost but it is not wasted. Investing our talents are never wasted because it is a learning experience. Talents should be driven by love and the passion to want see social change. If talents are driven by fear or selfishness, it is like a dull piece of metal with gold coating. It is not pure and it only looks good on the outside. Same for this project. When we invest our talents in our students, they gain. We do not know the exact dynamics of our success, but it definitely changed something in them for the better, and we are really satisfied with it.

What I would do if I had more lessons in future with them

The process of 'naming of the world' as what Friere (1970) described has to involve everyone and that 'it cannot exist with love, faith, humility and critical thinking. (Pg72) It is a dialogical process where everyone is communicating, providing, interlocking and discussing their ideas with each other. Through actions and dialogue, we can create and change the world. I believe that we should move into more discussions where their critical thinking skills are being challenged. Through critical thinking, they are able to understand and develop empathy for each other. It doesn't just stop here. They then work and collaborate with each other towards social change. According to Govan, Nicholson& Normington (2007), they stated that 'collaborations between professional theatre practitioners and community-based participants are often intended to improve the lives of the participants, to extend cultural democracy and contribute to the process of social change.' (Pg 73) They desire for social justice and change in this world so that the world will become a better and more beautiful place to live in. Not just for themselves but for the people around them as well. The reflection process helps them to think of their actions and consequences. 

After every drama activity, I will do a reflection discussion where they have to think why they did that and how they can improve the situation from there. It is very much like Boal's theatre of the oppressed. I would like to work on drama conventions and forum theatre with these students to expand their creativity and imagination skills through exploration and experimenting, because it was evident when they did still images in week 3! Things that we did not expect them to do, they did it out of their own imagination! The results were amazing. I believe that when we do forum and process drama, they can change their perspectives and in turn be the life changers of society. Because when they do these drama activities, they identify problems and issues of everyday life and experiment in these issues to uplift the oppression. 

If I ever had the chance to work with students again, I will be gladly to take up that position because I find joy and satisfaction educating them and seeing transformation in them. 


Bibliography
 Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. England: Penguin group
 Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R. (1993) Reflective Practice for Educators: Improving Schooling Through Professional Development. Newbury Park, California: Corwin Press