Sensing Spaces Drama Festival Dec 3-4

Yesterday and today I took part in the Sensing Spaces Drama festival. It was such an exciting and memorable experience, and theres so much that I learned it's insane. When I heard about the ISTA drama festival that was occurring in AIS-R, I was very excited to sign up as soon as possible. Theater is my favorite IB subject and something I am very passionate about, so being able to soak up new drama skills from professionals was an opportunity I didn’t want to waste. I had been told that the festival would last 2 days, with 2 workshops on one day and 1 workshop on the other day, along with breaks between the workshops to practice improvisation games. At the end of the second day, we would be incorporating all that we had learned into a walk-through performance for high school and middle school. As the first day started and the festival teachers prepped us for what we were about to do during orientation, I was skeptical as how we would be incorporating 3 very different workshops about improvisation, designing, and the South Indian dance “Bharat Natyam.” To warm-up, the festival began with warm-up games that tied in improvisation and acting, such as being given a scenario and having to quickly make up a scene on the spot with a group of people. As the warm-up progressed, I felt very comfortable to put myself out there and cooperatively work with any improvisation group I got put into, even if they were completely strangers such as the students from BIS-R. Since we were put on the spot and were given limited time to work together, we got straight to the point in our performances and weren’t afraid to quickly give out ideas and work together. Our first workshop after the warm-up was with Gav Cross. As we talked into his room, he immediately made us play a game called ”Red-Green-Purple” to test our ability to follow directions, stay focused, and work quickly. Our whole group had to neutrally walk around the room and stop walking when Gav said red, walk when Gav said green, sit when Gav said purple, and not get distracted by anything else he said. After getting focused with this activity, Gav made our group practice a variety of emotions at 3 states of tension: low, medium, and high. For example, we played the emotion of sadness at the low state of tension as subtle sorrow, at the medium state as tearing, and at the high state as sobbing. Lastly at the workshop, we all devised our own performances based on an emotion and portrayed it as one of the 3 states of tension. Through this workshop, I learned the skills of keeping focused during a performance, channeling and portraying various emotions, and work quickly in a group. The next workshop we did was with Mrs. Lakshmi, who is an expert in the south Indian classical dance Bharat Natyam. I was surprised when she told our class that it took her 7 years to master the dance form, but as the class progressed I realized why. Bharat Natyam requires a lot of hand/eye/feet/arm coordination, and every tiny gesture means a different emotion or tells a different story. At the end of this workshop, I learned how a performer can exaggerate his or her actions in order to express an emotion or story, and how important body language is to a performance. The second day, we began our third workshop with Cathy Cross, who taught us how to design spaces and make whatever space, whether big or small, a space that suits our performance by using props, lighting, and sound. Through this workshop, I learned that it is possible to make out a performance space with anything as long as you use your imagination and acting to express what the setting/story is to the audience. After this workshop, I learned the skill of creating complex settings with simple materials though my imagination, and I also learned the importance of set design in a performance. The last activity in the festival was combining everything that we had learned into a walk-through performance. As I was skeptical at the beginning of the festival as to how these different workshops would relate, I realized that I needed skills that I had picked up from each of the workshops to effectively carry out our performance. I was placed in a group to work in one area of the theater building, which would be one of the areas the attendees of the walk-through performance would cross. At the beginning of the festival if I was put into a situation like that where I only had two blank walls, 4 strangers, and restricted time to work in, I would’ve been confused and not been able to create a performance. But with the valuable skills I learned in the workshops, I quickly got together and exchanged ideas with my team, worked out a story in which I was the angel of death coming to take a girl’s soul, and used a simple rope to add to our performance. We then turned the light off and used our actions to create a sense of setting to the people who walked pass as the performance started. Therefore, this festival was an enjoyable experience in which I gained valuable skills by experts in drama. These skills have definitely helped start my creative thinking gears and helped me look at drama and performances in a new, fresh way, and I can’t wait until I can take these skills with me to my performances later on in life, such as the drama production this year.