Day One of WAC workshop

TUESDAY 4TH MARCH

I’ve spent like forever, trying to figure out whether or not I’m going to buy a notebook and create a journal or am I going to work out something online and type it out… as you can see, I’ve opted for the second option. Part of the reason why I’m doing this is the fact that I actually think better when I’m typing (for some obscure reason, its true) and my thoughts flow on paper much quicker this way.

So, back to the main topic of the day, it’s what I experienced today in our TA 101 class. Well, obviously you’d know what happened but I’m supposed to write about it so here I go, typing out what you already know about what we did today.

We had the theatre group from WAC (i.e. Women’s Action for Change) come over and do the first part of a two-day workshop for the TA 101 class. Under the leadership of Penny Moore, they had us doing Yoga stretches. Now speaking about those stretches, they were really simple and basic stretches that got me feeling all relaxed and loose, ready to head into the class. Before, I used to think that Yoga was like this seriously complex meditation thing that had people bending and flexing in ways unheard of, except if you were a Yoga enthusiast.

After we did our stretches, we played four games: the first was a name game. In this game we had to call out our names and then say the name of a city that shares the same first letter as our own names, here’s an example of mine which was “Sai from Sydney”. The second game was a shoe game. Everybody had to bring their shoes into the centre of the space and then pick out two mismatched pairs of shoes. Our job from there was to locate the other pair of the shoes we were wearing. I had a black sandal on my left foot and a penny loafer on my right foot. I had to find the people who were wearing the other pairs to my shoes. This was a pretty interesting game cause for some people there was a long line of people connected by the different shoes and for others, it was only a group of two who shared the same pairs of shoes.

After the shoe game everybody had to get into partners, of roughly the same size and hopefully weight, and then link arms standing back-to-back. My partner was Sinu. We had to sit in that same position; legs stretched out and push ourselves up to a standing position. This had to be the funniest game ever for me, especially if you were a spectator watching what was happening, you’d have been laughing your head off seeing me and Sinu trying to support each other and taking into consideration, I’m obviously twice her size and weight. It was absolutely hilarious! But do note that, we eventually did manage to stand – with some help and coaching from Penny.

We had to play that game twice and each time we played it, the number for each group grew; from two to four and from four to six. The final group count was the final straw; we just couldn’t do it anymore. If you had looked at our group, you would’ve noticed that we were made up of three big people and 3 small, skinny, light weighted people. Let’s just say that the big ones were truly the anchors of the team.

Our last game was the alphabet game. Everyone had to bend and twist their bodies into the shapes of the alphabet that were being called out, the only letter I had trouble with was, the letter H. After the first time, we had to get into pairs and work out ways of making letters.

Getting into the thick of things, we turned on a more serious note into discussion groups. My group was to discuss the ways that decisions are made in the family home; both traditional and modern. The basic run down of what we discussed is that, the traditional family is male dominated and therefore, decisions are made by the fathers or patriarchs of the family. In a modern family, however, we see a different case; one where the mother shares an equal say in all decision making processes and children too can question what their parents decide. With that in mind, we had to come up with a freeze frame or body sculpture of whatever points we raised in discussion.

For our body sculpture, we first depicted a scene (from a traditional point of view) of a father dictating to the family with everyone listening and not doing anything adverse to what’s happening. The second scene, we had the parents come on and watch and listen as their children argue or fight amongst themselves for their parents attention, each eager to voice their opinion on what’s being decided.

That exercise, helped me think outside of my usual sphere of what I think Theatre is all about. I mean, when you say theatre, the first thing that pops in my mind is: Julius Caesar or something like the Phantom of the Opera. I never knew that Theatre could be so invigorating, fun, and free-styled. It gets me thinking about ways and means I could use to send a message across to a fellow peer about any situation, awareness or ideal. The exercise also helped to break the ice between those of us in the class who still don’t know each other that well.

After that, we had to sit and listen as Penny read a Malaysian folktale of the clever Mousedeer and the Giant. Penny only read until a certain point in the story, our job as a group was to come up with an alternative ending to the whole story and act it out using characters from the story. My group tackled that head on and came up with a scenario that people didn’t really expect. It was also fun to watch the other groups perform their depictions of what could have happened to the Giant and the Mousedeer.

I learnt a lot from this exercise. It got me thinking about how we have different perspectives on what could have happened but then we also shared several common traits to our story – the one recurring point was the fact that the snake knew the rabbit was a double crossing backstabber and quickly made note of that to the other animals in the forest. I also learned that improvisation played a major key in keeping the story lively and exciting. Another point you can take into account, is that I realised that while the Theatre Space is small, one still needs to raise one’s voice if one wishes to be heard, especially in a funny scene where conversation is happening over the laughter.

All in all, I enjoyed the first day of the WAC workshop. I’ve learnt a lot from it, most of what I’ve learnt I can apply in future to whatever it is I’m doing whether it’s in Theatre, Music, Dance or just plain old mucking around.

This Thursday, we will watch WAC perform and also round off the week’s workshop with good fun! I can’t wait for it. Keep reading for more updates on Week Two’s activities.