What is a Director?

Task title: 'The Movement Performance'.

Date of task: 20th September, 2011.

Aim of task: To create a play with a skeleton movement text.

Description of task:

• We are spited into groups of five, I am with Undine, Tara, Oda, and Prodhi, two of us, Undine and I, as directors, and the rest as A (Prodhi),B (Oda), and C (Tara).
• This is our instruction:

• We decided to make it in a story about drug dealing, A wants to but drug from C and B is her friend, trying to stop her.

Reflection:

• I realized how many possibility in a simple skeleton frame of a play! I enjoy being a co-operative director, we discussed with the actors and we did a good job.

Conclusion:

• Creativity is very important for a director, and a director can have a god-like image (everything is following his order) or can also be co-operating (listening to others' opinions and ideas).

True Lies

Task title: 'True Lies'.

Date of task: 19th September, 2011.

Aim of task: Pair up in two, and tell your partner two stories about yourself, one false and one true. See if they can guess which is which.

Description of task:

• Partners in turn tell each other two stories. Act as if both are true, but one is false. Partner has to guess which one is true.

• I told the true story about why and how I came into LPCUWC and a 100% false story of my first girlfriend. My partner,  Undine, guessed correctly. She told a story about hitchhiking and meeting a photographer (false) and her road trip in the summer (true). I guessed wrong.

Reflection:

• I think I need to further improve my skill of observing people, I read a book written by a former FBI agent about mind-reading, and then I guessed Steve's true and false story correctly, after observing his small movement of his body and especially eyes. Undine purposely  pretend to be nervous when she is saying his true story, I am not really thinking much as I am planning my own story, so I guessed wrongly, I should have realized that it is too obvious.

Conclusion:

• Knowing how to tell a fake story is important as acting is performing an imaginative story.

Show watching 1: One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution

Name of the show: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution'.

Date of show: 16th September, 2011.

Aim/reason of watching the show: We got free tickets, and our teacher, Steve, think the director, Danny Yung, is very good.

Description of show:

• 'One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution' is using the idea of the book, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', by Gabriel García Márquez, expressing the incidents happened in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by using the horizontal movement of actors on stage throughout the whole play, they represent different types of activities, such as weddings, funerals, revolutions etc. They express them mainly with action and the show only contains a little bit of sounds, including the count down of numbers and some songs that is popular during the beginning years of the PRC.

Reflection:

• This show is very abstract, the whole idea of the show is just expressed by the movements and actions of the horizontal-moving actors, I think it is a brilliant idea, but the show is a bit too long, there are a lot of repeating elements throughout the show, and it became quite boring in the middle part, but the last part is excellent, my favorite part is that they dim all the light and when the lights turned on again, there is a crawling girl in the middle of the stage and all the lighting device above the stage is lowered to almost ground level, the visual effect is excellent!

• I think the show is split into three parts, which are before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution. As there is a big difference in the actions, first they dress in white, and everyone is just walking around, then some people turned black, and there are people holding bamboo sticks, hitting them on the floor, and at last the people are mostly dressed in black, and they are holding modern suitcases.

• I originally think that the play is about the book by Gabriel, but it turned out to be they are just using the idea of the book, as I learned another book, 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' by him, I am excited of watching the play, but this Chinese version of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is also good, I am not feeling regret of watching this!

Conclusion:

• The show is a very good example of a creative abstract play, and it also reveals the changes in China in the past one hundred years.

What is an Actor?

Task title: 'Three Types of Acting'.

Date of task: 15th September, 2011.

Aim of task: Act out 'The Life of Steve Caligar' in three different types of acting: Realistic, narrative, and abstract.

Description of task:

• 'The Life of Steve Caligar'
• We need to make up a story, and we are split into three groups, each with six people, then perform the story in three types of acting: Realistic, narrative, and abstract.
• This is what we designed Steve Caligar's life:
• He was born in New Zealand
• He dropped school and went to China, work as a maintenance worker in a school.
• He fell in love with a girl called Olivia, but she rejected him
• He felt sad and suicide
• I am the abstract group with Undine, Adam, Jason, Nashwa, and Dorte, I act as Steve and Undine act as Olivia. We decided to use the rest of the team as the emotions of Steve, they surrounds the two and at last, dragged Steve on the floor and killed him.

Reflection:

• This is my first time in the Theatre course acting! And also a quite interesting one! I have never really think of doing an abstract play before, I think we did a good job, although our play is a bit short, but I think if we have more time, we can come up with more thing.

Conclusion:

• There are lots of different kinds of acting, and in order to be a good actor, we need to understand them, and know the properties of them.

Introducing myself

Task title: 'Presenting Myself'.

Date of task: 14th September, 2011.

Aim of task: Using words, images, and objects to present myself.

Description of task:

• 'Use words to describe yourself'
• Each person gets a piece of A4 paper, and need to write words that they think can describe/represent him/herself, in a form of a spider web.
• This is my web of words:

• 'I chose Theatre because...'
• Each person gets another plain A4 paper, and need to write sentences that explains why we chose Theatre.
• This is my reason of why I chose Theatre:

• 'A picture that represent yourself'
• Each person gets a piece of A3 paper, and need to draw a picture that they think can represent themselves.
• This is my picture:

Reflection:

• I think the words I chose to describe me are quite suitable, I think I need to work harder on not being lonely, I will try to get more friends, and I think joining the Theatre can help me with that, and I also got a lot of friends in the Theatre class!
• The reasons why I chose Theatre are quite reasonable I think, but I am the only local students from local school in the Theatre class, maybe other HK students would rather choose another science/humanities subject. I think at this moment, I will say the Theatre is more than my expectation, my teacher, Steve, is really amazing, all the other students are talented, and I love it, I think I won't regret my choice.
• For the photo that I drew to describe myself, I drew a man with a cactus covering him, and I wrote "A cactus (man) who wants a hug (water)." It is like a crossover methopher, it means a man who wants a hug, like a cactus wants water, but I am sometimes like a cactus, I sometimes look like a person that doesn't want to talk, but I really want to express myself to the others. And I think this picture can describe me. And surprisingly, people started hugging me when all our pictures are displayed! I felt the love in the theatre class and I almost melted! I guess this picture will never represent me in the future again!

Conclusion:

• Understanding myself is a really important thing, not only for theatre, but even for the life of a person. After knowing myself thoroughly, I can then act like someone else, it is the process of breaking my original personality and build up another one.

Trust

Task title: 'Building Trust'.

Date of task: 12th September, 2011.

Aim of task: To build trust between classmates by playing two games, 'Trust walk' and 'Trust fall'.

Description of task:

• 'Trust walk'
• Partners in turn cover their eyes, the one who can see guides the other to walk in the room with many other pairs, firstly with a palm, then with a single finger, and finally with only sounds (not words).
• My partner is Adam, as we met each other in the Challenge Day during the admission process, we trust each other. The game runs quite smoothly, not many people bumped together.

• 'Trust fall'
• Six people a group, five of them forms a circle, and the one left stands in the middle, with his/her legs closed, keeping his/her body straight, cross his/her arms, close his/her eyes, and fall. The people in the circle need to prevent the one in the middle from falling to the ground, and all six in the group will be the one in the middle in turn.
• I have played this game before, so I personally don't have any problem on letting myself fall freely, but the biggest problem we have is that the boys (including me), are too heavy for the girls to catch and push back, so the game became really exciting when some of the boys nearly fell!

Reflection:

• I really like these two games, I think they can really make all the theatre students become closer,  I enjoy being in a strong community, where we all trust each other and work towards a common goal.

Conclusion:

• Trust is a very important element in a team. In a Theatre class, we need to trust each other in order to have good co-operation in a successful play.

Intro

This is a record of my IB theatre journey, in Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong, academic year 2011-2013. I am Felix Chu from Hong Kong.