Monologue work Day one

Thursday 13 March 2008

Well, today I was very late for class, and i found out i was assigned to Pritina who is to be my director for my monologue. I must say, i couldn't have picked a tougher one to do...

In our group there's myself, Anshu and this other chick Elizabeth who hasn't been to a single TA 101 class and so we're like wondering who she is... wonder upon wonders, she actually turns up for the class and well i think she's pretty cool. we ended up sitting down and working through some stuff with Pritina.

First Pritina had us look each other in the eye and tell them how much we loved them, my partner was Elizabeth and so i was like: Elizabeth, you know that we've been friends for a long time and there's no beating around the bush with you. there's something i have to say and well, it's not that easy to do... I LOVE YOU."

OMG!!! i never knew it could be sooo simple, but then later i would find out how hard it can be to keep yourself in character... Elizabeth had to do the same thing to Anshu who did it then to me... the exercise was pretty good and it got me a thinking about how i could work out my character for the monologue and also how i could better play that character.

We finished class early with plans to meetup and also Pritina reminded us to start working on memorising our lines for the monologue. God i hope i can do it.

Meet your directors

Tuesday 11 March 2008

Ok so like, we had a quick class, and it was pretty good... today we got to meet our directors... YAY! and wonder of wonders, my director was Pritina... she's pretty cool and i hear she's a straight A freak or something, she works hard to score A's... which is pretty good cause i'm hoping some of her hardwork and dedication will rub off on me. My partners in the team are Anshu and Elizabeth who we haven't seen at all.

Pritina wanted us to have a look at the monologue list and pick out three that we liked the most, or that we felt that we could do... we didn't talk for long, casue i had already printed out the whole monologue list and picked out the one i wanted... which was the one from the previous post...

after that, we decided to meet up later and start work on our monologues, once we had picked them of course.

My monologue

Original Piece by Linda Richards

Character: Taylor Gender: Male
Age (range): 16-20 Style: Drama
Length: 3 minutes

Background Info: It is about a homosexual teenager talking about his childhood and his need for acceptance.

I didn't mean for it to happen. It just did, I mean does anyone ever really decide for themselves who they would like to fall in love with? I just saw them and I knew. I didn't understand it then, didn't know who I really was, but even then I was changing. My life was taking directions that I couldn't understand the impact of at the time. I didn't understand all the oppression that I would have to endure over something as trivial as this.

I never knew until I was in the seventh grade. All the "cool" guys were coming to school hand in hand with their girlfriends. Everyone wondered where mine was. I've never had a problem getting girls to notice me. I've been asked out plenty of times, but I just wasn't interested. I even tried to go out with a few, but there was no feeling in it for me. All the guys began to talk about me. They all suspected that I was different, but I tried to hide it from all of them. I didn't understand what there was to feel ashamed about, but I was ashamed.

I started trying to dress like the rest of them, tried to talk about hot girls, tried to pretend that I wasn't dying inside. They made me hate who I was, hate myself for being different. I would lie awake and cry, hoping that when morning came, I would be what they all wanted.

To this day I hear people’s harsh words as I pass by, "Freak! Fag! Gay." These words all hurt so much, yet I hear them all the time. Why does it matter who I have feelings for, so long as I am capable of loving, the same as you are capable of loving others. I hear people use the word gay in the meanest ways. I hear you say "That’s so gay!" As if being "gay" is something bad, stupid, or ugly. I know that every one of you out there has probably said something like that at one time or another, and I urge you, think before you say something like that. It’s hurtful.

I'm a person just like you. I bleed, I cry, I laugh, I love, and hearing hateful words and being attacked because of my beliefs hurts just as much as when it’s done to you. My sexuality is just one part of me, just as yours is only a small part of the person you are.

Next time you hear someone use "gay" or "fag" or "queer" in a derogatory manner, please remember, it hurts. I don't ask for you to believe what I do, I don't ask you to choose the path that I have been given, I just want you to accept me for the person I am inside. Look beyond this and see a person that is just like you. (thinks to self) . Is that the problem? Am I a little too much like you for your comfort? Do you hate me because you see a little of me hiding in you?

Things to look out for

Keep an eye out for my journal on the work I went through with my Director for my monologue.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE INFO!

Day Two of WAC workshop

THURSDAY 6TH MARCH

Well, its day two of our workshop with the team from WAC and I have to say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and I’ve definitely learnt stuff that I could employ in the future, especially when considering our story for Theatre for Development and the art of Storytelling. But then I’m getting ahead of myself.

We started the class with a few Yoga stretches. To be exact, we did the Salutation to the Sun moved down to do some leg muscle stretches before moving into the cobra and down into the cat, finishing off leg stretches, body twisted and our heads looking upwards into the ceiling. We did that about 3 times before we moved into doing some games.

First off, we played the zoom game, which I’ve played several times over, and I’d have to say that this round of zoom was the fastest and funniest ever. We ran this through several times until Penny started handing out slips of paper that we had to read and keep to ourselves, not divulging anything to anyone. My bit of paper read: Take all the chairs to the windows at the right. Everybody was divided into 3 groups. The first group was mine; we had to take all the chairs (15 in all) to the windows on the right side of the room. The two other groups had to do the same thing, only one had to take it to the centre of the room, the last team had to take the chairs to the doors on the left side of the room.

Now, the thing about this game is that all fifteen chairs have to be at the window, door and centre of the room at the same time, which was impossible to say the least. Everybody fought for the chairs. Some stole whatever chairs were laid for the other teams; others fought, pulled, screamed and laughed their way around. It was a very challenging, tiring and yet fun game. In this game, there were no winners or losers – just a bunch of tired people trying to work their way around the problem.

From playing that game, I’ve learnt to think outside the box. There are instances when I can’t see my way through a problem, and I would need the help of others to work out a solution that might work or it might not, but at least we worked out something. If you wanted to know, we thought of arranging the chairs in a big circle that encompassed all three areas: the window, the door and the centre of the room to complete the game, although it seemed right to us, it was only a possible solution to the problem of the game.

After that game, we sat down to watch WAC do their first performance, a theatre for development piece focusing on Suicide.

The play was about a young couple; the girl was from a typical rural Indian family and the boy was of Fijian and Part-European (?) origins. Their names were, Preeya and Jerry. Preeya’s parents wanted her to have a traditional arranged marriage with another respectable Indian family, but she wanted to marry Jerry instead. Involved in the story is Preeya’s want to complete her education and become a teacher but her father wanted her to get married and then let her future husband decide whether or not she could complete her teaching courses.

In the course of the story, Preeya was pressured by Jerry to run away and elope with him, but she wanted to remain on good terms with her parents. In the end, she took her own life. After her funeral, her brother left the family and started drinking, losing himself until Jerry found him and took Preeya’s brother to his (Jerry’s) place to sort himself out and do something with his life. Preeya in the afterlife was given a chance to see what consequences her actions had on each member of the family and on Jerry.

Overall, I thought the play was ok. To be honest, I thought the storyline could do with a little more brushing up. The actors were in the right emotional setting for their characters but some, e.g. the mother, were a little over-the-top with the way they presented themselves.

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.