Auf Wiedersehen NUS Stage, and more on TS1101e

There's quite a bit of events to work through this week, so here goes!

Dancing through life

A lifetime ago, I trained in ballet and Chinese folk dance. While I was never the most disciplined dancer as a child, I did have a sense of rhythm and movement which lives on somewhere in my mind and body. This week in TS1101e, we were given a crash course in modern ballroom dancing as part of our movement exercise. Dancing again after a decade was a strange yet familiar experience, and I fully enjoyed collaborating with my partner to regain some of that long-lost physicality.

We both took turns to lead and follow so that we could get used to the rhythm, and somewhere along the way it dawned on me that specificity in dance was as important as it was in acting. At first, we did not decide if we would put our left leg out or our right leg back, and we ended up with awkward and off-beat spontaneous decisions, which was definitely hilarious on hindsight. However, it got progressively easier as the steps gradually sank into muscle memory. After each step, we made sure to check in with each other on what worked and what didn't, and eventually, we led the count together in order to ensure that we were on the same page.

In hindsight, the dance process was a team effort - it took the consciousness of both my partner and I to grasp each other's hands after every twist and turn and to guide each other through the process. This awareness lent its hand to the creation of a singular movement in which the equilibrium of our two distinct internal rhythms lies. We were reacting to each other in real time, settling into the pattern of our dance, making room and covering for each other almost on instinct. This was the spontaneity and indeed the liveness of theatre that I relish so much, and I'm happy to have experienced some of it in class.

It's not a game of charades

After a break, we returned to the space for the skit exercise. In our pairs from the dance exercise earlier, we were each tasked with devising a scene from little cards that were handed out. We got "A gym trainer and her client" - well, neither of us were gym rats! - so we had to try and piece together what people did at the gym. We eventually settled for a warm up routine, a weightlifting session and a cooldown routine - the SafeEntry scanning was added when we realized that we had to portray a real gym in Singapore, preferably right now during the COVID-19 era. I had learnt in previous acting classes that we were responsible for creating a realistic and complete interpretation of our given circumstances, but being able to devise them on the spot was a fun experience.

I made sure to construct stage directions such as entering the gym, closing the door behind me, showing the gym trainer my vaccination records, putting my phone and bag down. I did my best to ensure this continuity so that my audience would see a consistent and coherent story. My scene partner and I agreed that at least part of our movements would be spontaneous as there was a certain transactional dynamic that we needed to portray: I was the client with the purchasing power and she was the gym trainer with the knowledge of what I was supposed to do. It boiled down to "Same theory as the dance exercise, a leader and a follower", which helped me a lot as I read off her actions in real time and worked with the environment that we created for each other. Throughout the scene, we worked with the given circumstances as much as we could and did our best to recreate every detail of the scene.

As my partner had pointed out, many people thought that it was a gym session, which meant that we still had many specifics to work out. Looking back, perhaps we could have emphasized on the nature of the instructor-student dynamic by showing more of the teaching, which would have clued the spectators (question: Is it still an audience if there is no sound?) in on the "gym trainer" part of our cue card.

Our first lecture review was a fun exercise. I was really confused about all the different -locutionary words at first, so I consulted a few people and did my own research until I had all three definitions down. Reading Alan Ayckbourn's A Small Family Business was darkly amusing as I did Woman In Mind for H2 Literature back in Junior College, and I was immediately enamored by his familiar writing style. Of course, it would be a while before I can sight-read the perlocutionary forces surrounding each piece of dialogue, which is something I would try when I revisit Undercover by Tan Tarn How.

This entry would not be complete without a reaction to Undercover! I was running around and for lack of a better word, fangirling over the chemistry of Scene 4. I absolutely loved how the dialogue just works, and how they layered on each other to portray different meanings. Through the crossfire of intentions and objectives, the characters constantly read each other both verbally and nonverbally for signs of betrayal, suspicion or romantic interest and so on, over and above the actors reading each other in real time and I think that's beautiful. Sadly, thanks to the pandemic, we won't be allowed to do Scene 4, so I'll have to make do with letting that scene play out in my head.

Anyway, moving on.

One door closes and another opens?

It was a wild ride, but one unexpected live audition and an email later, it was clear that I won't be doing any shows with NUS Stage this year.

Well... my mind blanked out.

Oh. Okay then.

My hunch was right, I lacked range during that audition. It was a respectable audition, I did not flub my lines or destroy any one performance, but it just wasn't meant to be. As I told my friends in a Discord message:

I had prepared myself for this possibility and I immediately got started on Plan B: Join a musical theatre class. I've been planning on doing musical theatre for some time now. During the Stage interview, I even asked them if they did musical theatre (they weren't planning on one for this year). So now that my Tuesday and Thursday nights were free, I went ahead and signed up for the Stage Door program (S$660) this semester.

I still feel a little sore about not getting into Stage, but the show must go on. I'm certainly not a quitter and I had made it clear on many occasions that one single rejection absolutely does not reflect on an acting career. If I need more training before I'm ready to start on professional level productions, I'm ready to put in the work to win the panel over in one year's time.

That said, I'm really excited about musical theatre class. It's what I've always wanted to do, and though it is not a professional show opportunity (and costs money), I'm glad that I found the time for it. Maybe this latest development would point me towards an entirely different path, one that helps me get closer to the streets of New York City than I thought possible. I'm ready to make every moment count.

Next week (Week 5 of college), I'll be starting on the first lesson on Tuesday. That comes after Monday where we would be looking at Undercover by Tan Tarn How for the first time, so that's a ton of actor training coming my way. There's still a pandemic going on, and to be given the opportunity to engage and interact with literature that is alive and magical in this era - I'm truly grateful for that.