Acting

What do you think about acting? Well, I attended an acting workshop this past holiday and it was great.  Although I showed up late on the last day, the performance day, I made it anyway. I got to act with the rest of the class. Show some of our parents and other visitors what we learnt in the 3 days of workshop.

Our 19-year-old teacher Tess was amazing. She was young, of course, beautiful and very talented. She also has a very interesting background story to tell, but I'm not going to talk about that. She is shameless when it comes to acting and that's how we all ought to be when we act. But she also takes it very seriously. It's her passion I guess.

Instead of just describing to you what I learnt, I'm going to tell you (from my point of view) how acting felt like. I was the oldest in the class, yet again. But I'm pretty sure I had the least stage experience. Yeah, I've done Public Speaking and performed on stage some times before, but that was me singing. Acting is a totally different experience altogether. Like I said, you got to be shameless. Do you really think I'm shameless? Well, those of you who know me that is. Maybe I am, sometimes. But not all the time.

On the last day, I arrived at the English centre towards the end of the morning after leaving my CF outing slightly early. I was told that I stunk, but nothing less was expected of my new found friends, of course. Spending 3 days expressing ourselves through acting really brings people together, you know? I was excited that I was still able to be part of the activities later that day.

We had very limited time that day, so we only did 3 improvised scenes that could also be described as games. We had no scripts, nothing rehearsed, and that's what we all had voted on the day before. We all agreed we worked better without the pressure of memorised lines and pre-rehearsed body movements and so on.

We kicked start the 'performance' with a game we like to call 'Who I am'. This game is a little hard to explain so I'm just going to move on to the next game we played. 'Hesitation'. We'd have a scene and audience members would have to shout out random words while we were acting. We would then have to use those words in our scene no matter how random they were. I played a little girl at the zoo with my mom(Celine) and a zoo keeper(Shakeel). Some of the random words we were given were :balloon, tiger, lion, dinosaur, airport, candy, giraffes, crazy....
The next scene was between my sister and 3 other friends(Wei Hong, Zainul, Jessica). They were at the hospital. My sister played the patient. Words they got from the audience were: water, lunch, injection, McDonalds, emergency, doctor, camera....

Ok, maybe those game weren't that fun, but like I said, lack of time. The last game was kinda successful, in my eyes at least. 'Magic Chairs'. In normal circumstances, we would have 7 chairs, one for each student at different situations/locations. And once we chose to sit on them, we'd have to create a character with a motivation of being at that location or in that situation. The character must also have a good background story. But because we had limited space in the room, we used different places on the ground instead of chairs. I'm not going to be long winded and tell you all 7 stories, so I'll just tell you mine and my sisters. Oh, and we were asked questions by Tess about our characters, it was part of the exercise.

My sister was put beside a swimming pool. So this is what she came up with.... She was a single mother. Husband wanting a divorce. She was currently watching her 8-year-old daughter swimming in the pool. Her husband wanted a divorce because he had troubles with their daughter. According to her, he often called her daughter a beast. Her daughter shared the same distaste for her father. She was depressed. She acted emotionless and was thinking about the future while watching her daughter swim.
Nice story, huh?

Mine? Well, I'd say I've got nothing on my sister. I loved her imagination and her story. I was put in the playground. I chose to be a 26-year-old character named Lily. I was swinging lightly on the swings in the middle of the night. Why? Because I'm confused about my recent heartbreak. I was dating two guys at once. Had them both wrapped around my fingers and took full advantage of that. The 2 guys were also related, as uncle and nephew. Zeke and Jack were their names. Zeke the nephew, Jack the uncle. Jack was my childhood best friend that turned into something more whilst Zeke was a nice guy I met in high school and had dated since. I dated both simultaneously until I was caught. Then, I lost them both. My fault. The play ground held special meaning for me because I used to play in the sand there with Jack when we were just kids and Zeke and I played on the swings there together as older kids, always competing to see who could swing higher. I knew I was in love with them both and losing them, broke my heart. My own fault.
So that's my made up story. It was fun.

Now, I'm anxious for my acting debut. Well, it's sort of like an acting debut. My English class is having their annual performance day on the 25th of June at Tropicana Golf Club. It's so soon!! I have a part singing with the 4-year-olds in the opening act. My main part is playing a wife in a play title 'Bad Dream'. In the play, I have a very arrogant husband that has little care for the people around him, especially the people he works with. In his dream, I leave him and he comes to his senses when he awakens. From then on, he changes his behaviour, especially when treating other people. Cliche, I know. And I've got lines to remember! Trust me, acting isn't easy, especially script acting. I find singing much easier, thank you. Haha. We'll just see how I do, huh? I'm also understudying for a mother role but it's unlikely I'd have to play that too. This is my first year being exposed to activities like these and I'm having the time of my life. I look forward to it almost every week.

There's a lot more I can say about these Saturday classes I've started taking this year. Creative Writing and Public Speaking class is a blast. I wish I could join the English Literature classes but they're on Wednesday and I have extra curricular at school on that day thanks to the government. Oh well, we can't have it all right? Will update you more on my performing progress. I wish you could see me having fun acting as well as singing, mom:) 

A little info: I have a band, an acoustic band named 'Blueberry Cheesecake'. And pls, pls read the pieces AW writes here on my blog. I absolutely love them and AW inspires me so. I write too, just not as well. I love AW to bits and make sure you comment on her story 'HOME'. :)