My UWCSEA Learning Journey

In this Unit, I chose to do the “Girl” from “The pretty pieces”. I chose this because I really feel the tension of her feeling like she is trapped in a box.

I learnt how important it is to collaborate with each other is. When we were giving feedbacks, it made me realise a lot of things that I did not even realise while I was working by myself. When we were in a group, I did not realise it at all so, this was a really interesting opportunity for me to have.

Also, by giving feedback to each other and looking other people’s performance, it gave me an opportunity to rethink about my acting as well. I did not think that standing there and just speaking for 5 minutes or so is not a good way to communicate with the audience but by looking at other people’s progressing video, I realised it and revisited my own performance. I realised that I do not move much while I am performing.

At last, it gave me more confident to perform in front of others. I love performing on stage front of many people since I have been doing ballet since really young age. But still, I was really bad at projecting my voice on stage because I was not confident about my English pronunciation and also, I was not experienced in it. This gave me an opportunity to practice my performing skills.

Currently in our drama class, we are learning world theatre traditions.  Within this unit, we explored many different kinds of world theatre traditions for example puppets, traditional masks and traditional stories. In this post I will be comparing this three.

• WTT story : For WTT story, we did Ramayana without using any masks.This was really hard because we have nothing to cover our face and because of this, we had to show the character’s facial expressions really clearly using all our faces and bodies.
• WTT traditional mask: For traditional mask unit, we used two different kinds of  masks which are Indonesian traditional masks and a mask that have a specific characteristics in their facial expression. For the first class we did about masks, we used the characteristic one. This was harder than it looks because you have to use the body to be in the character since our faces are fully covered. I did “full” and it was really fun to pair up and do a performance with Hailey who was doing an old man. After doing this mask, we did Indonesian traditional masks. For this masks it was easier than the characteristic mask because our mouths were shown to the audience. We did fairy tails first and then Ramayana using this mask. When we were doing Ramayana, it was difficult to show the scenes in Tableau but it was really good to understand the rise and downs of the story. Also it was difficult to change our masks on stage.
• WTT story with traditional puppets : For puppets, we used two different puppets which were puppets from National theatre, Indonesian traditional puppets. When we were using NT puppet, it was really interesting to make it look like the puppet is alive. We have to think how the puppets breath, move, look at something all in once. We also watched how Lion King puppets are used and made. For Indonesian puppets, it was really interesting to experience because we had to think a lot of think in one movement and it was really interesting to learn how the people play  it train. We have to move everything with one hand and also, it was hard not to make the shadow of ourselves.

In our previous lesson, we made our own paper puppet and thought of how we can move it realistically. In class, we learned how to make the puppet look breath, move like it is living and how we can make it easy for the audience to understand the story.

• From the aspect of story telling, puppet is really useful because by using puppet in a right way, it makes the audience like they are looking the actual animal or person. In Lion King, a puppet of  Zazoo is used. It has a lot of  things that we can do with it such as moving the mouth and eyes. This is used because it is difficult for human to act animals in an actual show and it is really clear for the audience to understand the story.
• From the aspect of emotion, it is actually difficult to express the character’s emotion. But by their  movement, emotions can be expressed. For example, when the character is sad you can make them look down to show that they are depressed.
• From the aspect of manipulation, it is very important because if they did not use it well, the audience can not concentrate on the story and look at the human controlling them. In Lion King, there are motors in Scar’s helmet. It moves up, down, front and back to make him look scary in some scenes for example when Scar is trying tho frighten Sinba, he puts his helmet down so that it looks like we are looking at the puppet not the actor that is acting the character.

Descriptive– In the exemplar video that I watched there were many interesting things or techniques to watch. First of all, they used one single frame to describe and tell the whole story (equipment). Secondly, everyone was doing something on stage, they had lines  equally and they were multi rolling their parts (rolls). Lastly, they used the light effectively. They did not use all the lights that they can use so it is easier for the audience to get an atmosphere of the scene and also, they thought carefully where they stand (which spotlight they stand in).

Personal– In my opinion, the performance that i watched was really interesting performance to watch. When I thought of the reasons whyI think this way, I realised that there are less narration. This make the audience think more deeply what they are doing or what the piece is talking about. I felt like I am in a different world.

Reflection– This story was constructed by many people’s experience, life and thought when a significant thing happened to them and gathered them together in a really well structured transition. For example, at the beginning, they were talking about Staisy but suddenly, they dropped the frame and transitioned to a story of Daisy. They did not stop acting on the transition so it made more interesting to watch and when it was a story of Daisy, it was full with emotions. I could tell the tangled feeling of her when she was not able to be near her father when he died. On the last scene when she says “I’m sorry who are you?” it made the audience surprised or shocking so it made the story more memorable in a good way.