We forum the maid (Tutti) at home scene again. This time, CK wanted us to bring it to a climax where the tension escalates and the maid cannot take it anymore and decided to try to break free. We came up with possibilities of who the maid could turn to resolve the issue.
Objective of this scene
There must be this desire to change the situation into a better resolved situation. How to de-escalate the problem? What are the possibilities of resolving this situation? What are the options? Who could she call for help?
A person who does the replacing of character must be able to act it out and not say it within his or her comfort zone, which is in the case the audience perspective. Boal (1993) stated that 'Often a person is very revolutionary when in a public forum he envisages and advocates revolutionary and heroic acts; on the other hand, he often realizes that things are not so easy when he himself has to practice what he suggests.' (Pg 139) It is true because forum theater is a comfortable place to 'practice' and reflect on our social etiquette, make mistakes, reproducing what is seemingly 'moral' or 'right', critique, judge, make things better, etc. There is this desire to change the situation and circumstances while practicing forum theater. However, the real challenge is when we encounter the same thing on theater but in the real life. Do we really practice what we preach?
We decided to forum Aunt LiLi, to experiment ways to stop the tension from escalating and resolving the problem. Can Aunt LiLi change anything? We tried it out and it was quite successful in the way that there was a tension dissipation from the Maid towards Aunt LiLi and power shifting from Mum to Aunt LiLi. There was authority in Aunt Lili in this situation because she is the mum's good friend. The person who volunteers to make that change in this situation must embody the actor of Aunt LiLi. There should be no change of her work and things that she does, however, the character and personality may change.
2nd activity: Story Telling of Three Billy Goats Gruff by Oxford
With this story, we need to use our mother-tongue language or other languages to tell the story to the rest of the group members. I used Gibberish language because the rest used Mandarin to tell and my group was not a multi-racial one. One difficulty of doing this activity is that students in class do not have equal ratio of the four races, so it will be difficult to have all groups multi-racial. However, whether or not it is of equal ratio of different races, the main objective is to get the story and message across in a meaningful way. Even speaking in Gibberish has its own benefits. In a way, it helps in our psycho-motor skills, communication skills through non-verbal language, our expressions and gestures. Words are not the most important media of communication. Words are empty without expressions. They do not contain anything unless emotions play a part. Eg, an angry person will shout 'YOU!' but if no emotions are put into 'YOU!', it does not have any impact. But, without the use of words, it is even more difficult and we rely not on words anymore but on expressions and gestures to rely our message across.
I like the fact that we get to watch the youtube video before doing drama work on it.
3rd Activity: School Marketing
We then proceed to coming up with troll schools to market our schools to the parents (trolls also), who are scouting for troll schools for their children. I did the exact same activity for one of the presentations in my AED 105 class last year. Because our topic was about marketing strategies of the different schools in Singapore, I got the classmates in my AED class to come up with their own schools and sell them to the parents. We even got them monopoly money for them to invest in the school. It was a good activity where participants are involved in creating an imaginary school for their students. It gets them thinking and becoming a responsible principal, who cares for their students' welfare and growth. I also realise that as we think of skills and knowledge for our own 'schools', it is also what we want to acquire for ourselves. Similarly, it also helps us plan for the interests and welfare for others, taking into account what we want others to learn for their own benefit. It builds strategy-thinking, planning, creativity and teambuilding skills.
At the same time, this activity also gives student a voice of changing the social systems, whether is it the rigidity or the content of it. It gives students the imagined authority and stirs their desire for social change or even political change. Govan, nicholson and Norrminton (2007) stated in their article that 'because devised performance emphasises participatory working methods, it has often been regarded as an effective and flexible way to move from the individualism of autobiographical narratives to more collective forms of community participation and social identification' (Pg 73) They know their responsibility, identity and authority in society, therefore they have this desire to participate and witness change for the better for the society and people. For eg, the skills and knowledge that they come up with will help the future generation learn in a better and more effective manner.
It was an interesting lesson where we end off the session with a conscience alley of a post of Facebook to a kid going to the troll school.
Bibliography
Boal, A.(1993) Theatre of the Oppressed Chapter Summary & Analysis. U.S.A : Theatre Communications Group.
Govan, E., Nicholson, H., Normington, K. (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London & New York: Routledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment