PHASE #6. sex.blood.violence.gore

That's right. An all-female cast.

I have a penchant for post-modern local writing, and so when Andrew handed out the stack of papers (yes, the stack I’ve been dreading from the beginning) I was delighted to find a piece by Alfian Sa’at.

It was an assigned reading. But I was more than happy to read the whole stack in one sitting.

However, Andrew’s word of advice – that the script is important, but acting is more than a played out version of script analysis.

To illustrate this very concept, he handed out another sheet of paper; thankfully, with barely over fifty words.

There were five or six scenarios, each with two lines of dialogue. We were to create our own logical circumstances surrounding those lines and to act it out. Naturally, we spent most of our given time thinking up ‘creative’ situations and had fun play-acting them. But when we performed it before Andrew, he was less than impressed.

He told us that we were too focused on the wrong thing. The circumstances shouldn’t shape the dialogue; rather, the dialogue should shape the circumstances. We were allowing the setting to control and limit our abilities to improvise as actors. What, instead, we should do, was to simply come up with minimal setting and let it go from there, all on the spot.

We tried it out again, to incredibly different results. As we said our lines, we were able to go beyond the initial dialogue and let the interaction flow naturally. This, Andrew later remarked, was to actually listen to your fellow actor and let the moment be rooted in reality. Our acting felt much more real, without all the pomp and circumstance we had been so excited to create. And, ironically, it became so much more interesting and engaging to watch because as audience, we could relate.

We asked Andrew why the lines were so limited. His response? That dialogue should never be the main focus of any play. Sure, it is crucial as a catalyst of the plot. But we are able to create expression on more platforms than the verbal one. Our body, voice, imagination and the surrounding space are all equally important in building up certain emotions and charging up a scene, and we should never neglect the use of the other three for the voice spectrum alone. We have to learn to control and curb our impulse to speak out and explain everything through verbal cues to set our performances apart from the rest.

Trust Andrew to turn twelve lines of three-worded dialogue into such a powerful teaching tool!

PHASE #5. why do I always miss the fun things

Somehow, I have a knack for missing the best things.

Suffering from the after-effects of pulling an all-nighter, I couldn’t make it on time for class today as I woke up with a pounding headache and a slight fever that left me bounding in the opposite direction towards the campus clinic instead of the NIE Playhouse as usual.

Yet, from what I’d gathered from the best bunch of classmates ever, class was held in the Blackbox today! The actual Blackbox! Imagine my angst. All the glorious equipment that I could’ve touched and messed with, all the theatre feels and dramatic twirls I could’ve had in that space!

My classmates told me about how they’d put up a mini-performance, a homework piece left over from the previous week. They also further practised the onstage depiction of character relationships, and how to actually work that push-pull factor to ‘make’ your fellow actor do something. Instead of it being a round-robin turn-taking exercise to recite your own lines, actors should in fact listen to one another speak and react accordingly. Actor A, in order to push the plot along to Actor B turning around in dismay, should scream in a way that would in real life cause someone else to turn around in similar dismay.

And the biggest takeaway of the day – that comedy and tragedy are in fact closely related. Who knew that Julius Caesar and Bottom the Ass-head had more in common that they (and we) thought? When Andrew brought it up, everyone was confounded.

Of course, it’s not so simple or difficult to comprehend. Both require great levels of tension in the body and between characters, as we studied in a previous lesson. Furthermore, both must be truthful and rooted in reality to be relatable. Dramatic collapses and piercing laughter may be easy on the eyes in a theatre space, but will fail to evoke genuine reverberation from the audience without a particular sense that this could actually happen. As Andrew commented on the different short pieces, he remarked that it mustn’t all be pretend; that there is a certain difference between acting and performing where the former is simply pretense while the latter is laced with threads of reality.

PHASE #4. a Cinderella story

When I grow up, I wanna be a princess.

Ever dreamed of being a Prince Charming or Disney Princess? I got my chance in theatre class. Today’s theme was the various ways to tell a story. Andrew picked a familiar tale and left us to reconstruct it in groups. His rationale? That we already knew the story by heart and could be free from recalling details and instead focus on how we wanted to tell it.

We began by picking a single moment from the famous fairytale, and then worked outwards to build a series of moments that would serve as the skeleton to our little performance. Eventually, we reconstructed the entire story, from the renowned fairy godmother scene through the oops-my-glass-slipper scene, all the way till the very end.

And from there, we learnt that chapters are instrumental in dividing the story – or play, in context – into actor- and audience-friendly segments that would also allow the director to pick out scenes to focus on.

Zhengliang was hilarious as the Prince Charming waiting in his castle as he idled by doing nothing. But thanks to him, we learnt about how to create a shopping (or a to-do) list of actions, to express emotions or otherwise. Contrary to popular (and my) belief that we should act out emotions, Andrew put it quite plainly that you cannot, as amateurs, effectively act out emotions. In verbatim, ‘What if I’m supposed to pretend to be sad, but I’m actually not sad?’

/combs hair /breath spray /mirror check

It was thoughtful, and all the more thought-provoking. An emotion is intangible and spontaneous, so how could one so simply pretend to have a lightbulb moment of sadness? From where could that imaginary sadness possibly stem if you’re not in fact sad? It’s like saying we could pretend to be the creator of lightbulbs and give an accurate firsthand description of the invention process. I.e. we cannot, unless we are, or we are extremely skilled liars (a.k.a. actors).

Therefore, it would be easier to act out a list of actions that symbolize or constitute a certain emotion, quote unquote. Every little action contributes and is part of the action on stage, and therefore we have to all the more be psychosomatic – a constant awareness of everything we do in front of an audience. For example, to act out ‘happiness’, you could be 1. throwing your hands in the air just because; 2. grinning from ear to ear just because; 3. bouncing about with a spring in your step just because, etc., etc.

Shopping - for actions

We tried it out in a replay of our Cinderella stories. It worked like magic, no pun intended.

It’s amazing how a moment of clarity like this could affect our pre-conceived notions of how we should be going about doing something. I’ll be sure to teach this nifty trick to my very own cast.

PHASE #3. from a jellyfish to a tragic character

Today’s lesson was so much fun! We spent a large part of the three hours going back and forth between being a complete wobbly jellyfish to ridiculous caricatures of Hamlet. Sounds made up? I assure you it’s not.

It’s all about expression of the different levels of tension.

Level #1: jellyfish – where there is nary an ounce of strength in your body. We wobbled about the rehearsal space like invertebrates and fell apart all over the floor.

Flea fly jellyfish!

Wish I was this cute when I wobbled everywhere!

Level #2: Californian – ever watched a drunken American swagger and stumble over the pavement? Yup, that’s us, practising a more human, but still completely paralyzing level of tension.

Level #3: normal human being – how we walk every day. Kind of like a leisurely stroll, or walking without much purpose or destination.

Level #4: stealthy – James Bond with less swag. Maybe a lesser criminal, or an assassin making his way to his target. Significant tension, but suppressed to make room for tiptoeing around.

Not sure how you're supposed to be stealthy with that huge ring.

Level #5: alert – James Bond or Bourne on a mission. Tense enough due to a constant lookout for potential targets or enemies with a gun. We had fun pretending to be in a movie.

Level #6: comedic – what a BEAUTIFUL day! I want to sing a song about the beautiful green grass! Everything was in exclamation marks as we pranced about the space dancing. You might argue that a comedic or happy character requires less tension, but this is not true, as actions must always be pronounced and seemingly lax gestures are in fact laced with direction and force for the stage.

Level #7: tragic ­– Hamlet. Slow, purposeful? dramatic? steps, marked with pronounced grief and unspeakable regret. Many thuds were heard as we fell to our knees.

'Give me your best tragic Hamlet impression.'

Why is tension so crucial to theatre, you ask? Well, we learnt that tension, not conflict, is what’s central to drama. And tension, unlike conflict, requires nothing more than body language to be expressed. A simple push and pull between characters could speak volumes without explicit explanation of back stories, which could get unnecessarily complicated and possibly even boring.

Of course, apart from our own bodies, the room itself imposes a meaning on us and takes on different values every time we change the setting; space is always loaded with meaning and allows us to make do with imagination and creative absence to make up for any possible lack of logistics. Sometimes, we choose to use space instead of actual equipment to evoke a certain sense of theatricality.

What a big takeaway from a simple, fun exercise.