ISTA 500words reflection

These are my most valuable three days staying in New York and working with ISTA. While we were having 4 sessions everyday, we have watched two broadway shows: Betelgeuse and To Kill a Mockingbird. As we do theater activities with people from all over the world, I realized how talented the people around me are. I was amazed by their wisdom and also got a lot of inspiration for my solo project too. 

On the first day, I got to experience and feel deeply:
  1. Seven stages of tension
  2. Labon (heavy and light)
The exercises we did are: walking across the room direct, indirect, with target, imitation, commitment, breathing, and seven stages of tension. The seven stages of tension started with feeling no force and tension on you, which means your body is in a total relaxation; the second stage is being able to move slightly; the third stage is being able to sit up straight; the fourth stage is being able to stand up; the fifth stage is being able to walk slowly and lightly without alert and tension; the sixth stage is being highly alert of what is around you while walking pretty fast, which is almost like a panic; the seventh stage is completely being stopped but feeling really intense. 

We also a traditional Peking Opera Class. This class is actually very interesting and attractive for me since I am from China and I ironically know very little about Peking opera. We learned about the Conventions on stage. So, the Conventions in theater are actually rules on stage. Here is the example of Convention of Peking opera:
  1. Roles
Female: girls, young adult women, middle adults women, old women
Male:
Painted face
Fool

2. Performance skills
Hand, arms position, walking (feet), circular motion, facial expression, face.

3. Costumes

4. Stage setting (empty space) (props)

5. Music 

6. Characters are architects (recognizable types in every play) (stereotypes)

7. Reaction from the audience (cheering)

8. One rule: once you start the play you never stop still the end.

And I also learned a fun fact about Peking Opera Actors and Actresses: once they pick a role, they will only work on that role for the rest of their life. 


To get a snippet of how to work in the Director’s notebook and practice our sense and critical thinking as a director, we took an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird, and then took out a specific phrase to develop it into a vivid moment. But before that, we did a very meaningful exercise by performing a very short movement for a moment and adjusting the speed of the movement, which makes the same movement into 2 completely different interpretations. 

Also, the teacher gave us many useful tips about how to tear apart the script and analyse it:
1: read the text
2: find out the setting
3: characters and their relationship
4: what happened (conflict)
5: taste（sensation) (enable to create a visionary picture) 
…

And our teacher also mentioned that, “People might have totally different analysis of the script and it is totally normal.”






During MCA：tectonic theater, we learned Éléments of the stage (communicates everything): Gesture, Text, breath, sound, body language, spatial relationship with the audience, lighting, sound/shock, facial expression, costuming, set, props, virtuosity, makeup, bgm, projections, casting, odor, fog/haze…

And for our final project of our class, we are asked to compose a random piece of moment that include all the things we have learned: triangulation, contact improve, physical theatre, Beijing opera，tension，emotion，atmosphere，meaning，Betelgeuse, To Kill a Mockingbird, tectonic movement devising, space workshop(vocal points). I choses an excerpt of Ophelia’s soliloquy from Hamlet to work on. 


Ophelia. [sings] 
(Beijing Opera dance move starts with circling and stop and stand still while singing the lines, the tension is 5, walking very light and consistent and indirect) 

And will he not come again? 3065
(Change position and posing) 
And will he not come again? 

(Walking 
No, no, he is dead; 
Go to thy deathbed; 
He never will come again. 
His beard was as white as snow, 3070
All flaxen was his poll. 
He is gone, he is gone, 
And we cast away moan. 
God 'a'mercy on his soul! 
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b' wi' you.


Anyway, so much I learned and so much I was inspired by the people and also the broadway shows. I am excited to revise my solo project. 




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