My Journey...

Twelfth Night was like a dream come true. Having had studied the text at the age of 15, the play has a special spot in my heart. I have always imagined, in my daydreams, to perform in the play. The closest I had ever gotten was performing Act 1 Scene 2 in class, playing Viola. Never have I actually thought that I would have been able to actually perform a real performance.

The play that we put up was not exactly what I imagined from day 1. In my mind back then, was a performance where we each take a specific role, and where there was specific blocking and some props. I could not imagine how our ensemble would eventually turn out without proper blocking and numerous rehearsals. However, it turned out so much better than I expected. The concept worked even though we were sharing our queries about the end result just before the performance.

In the performance, I took on both major and minor roles. The roles that were I held close to me was of Feste the clown and the captain whereas the character I felt very distant from was of Olivia. It is funny how I felt close to the male characters but not of Olivia who is of the same gender as myself. Perhaps the lack of rehearsals for the characters played a part in this distant feeling.

I enjoyed the whole process of coming up with the whole performance, from the script reading to finally the final performance. My favourite part of the whole performance would definitely be the finale. The discussion of how we would perform the finale took place for several days before we finally decided which version of the song we would perform and how we can get everyone to be involved in the finale.  The moment when we finally nailed it during our own rehearsal was really unforgettable. It made us look forward to the end of the performance where we could all perform the song together again.

There could never have been a better way to end the semester than Twelfth Night.

We have finally completed our sight reading, casting and rehearsals for Twelfth Night, and next week will be our final performance.

We spent bulk of our time doing sight reading. I feel that this is really important because it helps us to get to know the text that we will be attempting. Although I have studied this text previously, I have forgotten quite a number of important facts because it has been quite awhile since I read the play. It was a good exercise for us all.

Upon completion of reading the whole text, we attempted to shorten the play by removing parts that we felt were a little redundant. Truthfully, I was shocked at the amount of scenes that were cut. When we were told that the text will eventually be shorten, I did not expect it to be cut so drastically. 

Finally, we casted characters for every scene. In some scenes, there are also a change of casts in the middle of the scene, to allow more people step forth and try out different characters. 

These are the characters that I will be playing:

• Act 1 Scene 2 - Captain
• Act 3 Scene 1 - Feste
• Act 3 Scene 4 - Servant
• Act 3 Scene 4 - Viola
• Act 5 Scene 1 - Olivia 

I am looking forward to the actual performance of the play. Some of us were thinking of getting the whole class involved in the song performance at the end of the play. Hopefully that falls into place and we can have a really good finale.

After a short warm up and sight reading for Twelfth Night, we attended a vocal workshop conducted by Michael Corbidge, a voice and text coach with the Royal Shakespearean Company, which lasted for about 3 hours.

Throughout the 3 hours, we saw how we transformed vocally. We started off with rather weak vocals and we ended up with strong vocals. The activities that were conducted help us stretched our capacity. 

We used part of text that was taken from Romeo and Juliet. And despite the whole hype for Romeo and Juliet since a long time ago, I have never actually read or watched the play. I do not really know the content apart from the very famous balcony scene and the line; O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

It was interesting to go beyond my limits although at times, I was struggling to keep up. On the whole, the experience was really an enriching one.

I hope that we can use the new activities that we have learnt as part of our vocal warm ups during our Twelfth Night rehearsals. 

There was another round of presentations today. The bulk of today’s presentation was on the different country theatre such as Australian theatre, African theatre and Indian theatre. Also, there was also a presentation on Augusto Boal, the founder of Theatre of the Opressed.

Yan Yan did a hands-on activity with us on Image Theatre. Image Theatre is a theatre form where participants create images of their lives, feelings, experiences, etc. The facilitator suggests a title or theme and then participants will individually sculpt 3D images under this title, using their own bodies as clay. Image Theatre is usually used in preparation for Invisible or Forum Theatre.  Surprisingly, I realised that I have been participated in something similar to Image Theatre before. During my Applied Theatre module, we frequently do sculpting and tableaux to present a particular situation.

Perhaps due to the amount of research that I have been doing on Augusto Boal for my Applied Theatre module, I was particularly interested in Yan Yan’s presentation amongst the rest. I did learn new things from here presentation, because I have previously been focused mainly on Forum Theatre.