Formation of Group

1. Bamboo Stick Game

To check how teamwork works with a partner, we did bamboo stick activity. Bamboo stick activity was that two partners hold the bamboo stick with their one finger and try to trust each other’s balance. If two people trust each other, the bamboo stick will remain stable; however, it they do not believe them, bamboo stick will lose balance and fall down to the ground.

2. Interview of each other’s theatrical ability

Like this, we interviewed four of us together and wrote the strength in theatre, personality, weaknesses, approaches, interests, and skills. By interacting and communicating each other’s traits, I figured out that our team is well-balanced team. Chaeyeon and I are positive, and creative. We both have bubbly personality and always tries to challenge us, but one thing that is different is that I am more strong in physical theatre and chaeyeon is more strong in verbal acting. For me, theatre is my tool of expression. I am not good at showing my emotions in daily life, so theatre helps her to express my conditions. Theatre makes me both relaxed and excited. I want to apply my theatre experiences to other areas. I love to show my physical expression to the audience and also be inspired by the reaction from them. I am good at communicating by physical theatre.Geo is a great dancer, who is part of “Unique”, the dance team of school. She is more interested in creating and directing the scene by using her theoretical knowledge than performing in front of people. Seojin says that theatre makes her excited. She is used to being onstage because she played an instrument since she was young, and she likes performing. She enjoys both being onstage and working backstage. She is good at kinesthetic response and catches small reactions from other people.

Member 1 (Subin): She/Her. Peace. Caring. Korea. Ordinary. Caring family & friends. Anxious but excited. Super ENFP. Theatre is her tool of expression. She is not good at showing her emotions in daily life, so theatre helps her to express her conditions. Theatre makes her both relaxed and excited. She wants to apply her theatre experiences to other areas. She loves to show her physical expression to the audience and also be inspired by the reaction from them. She is good at communicating by physical theatre.

Member 2 (Geo): She, her, INFP, Environmental issues (pollution), Cats, Arts, South Korea, In Branksome Hall Asia since grade 6, born in Seoul, residence, independent, Very confused, feeling pressure in everything but also enjoying this part of my life, so much questionable things. I watched many theater performance videos on youtube and learned some knowledge. More interested in various aspects of theater, especially directing the scenes and creating the stages (more important = the visuals of the set and stage), Wants to try emotional theme or topic of performance. Creative when directing the scene, Using many architectures and objects.

Member 3 (Seojin): She/her. Equality. Human rights. South Korea. International school. Busy but trying to be organized. INFP. Theatre makes her excited. She is used to being onstage because she played an instrument since she was young, and she likes performing. She enjoys both being onstage and working backstage. She is good at kinesthetic response and catches small reactions from other people.

Member 4 (Chaeyeon): She/ Her Values: World Peace, Health, Environmental issue, communication, friendship, family Cultural Background: Born in Seoul and lived for 16 years. Her birthday is 6/8/2004. She has two sisters and lived in Australia for 1 year. Enjoyed watching musical performance before the pandemic. Wants to work more on explaining physically than verbally more for directing scene. Come up with various idea for directing scene.

3. Starting Point Exploration

To choose a starting point, I did a short starting point exploration on my own. I thought of gender identity and tried to stretch this idea but felt like this topic is too broad and too cliche. Then, I decided to think of some real-life topic that we experience everyday but not oftenly shown in performance.

While the bamboo stick activity, I just thought of the topic “belief”. Belief in definition an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. Every work I do includes the trust between each other. This can be a religion, friendship, group, or myself. As I suggested this idea to my fellow group members they all agreed to my starting point. Then, we wrote down the Group agreements. This agreement’s purpose is to make our team to respect each other and get a better synergy. By having the rule, it helped our group overall the process because we were able to respect each other and listen to others’ argument.

4. Workshop Session

Today, we started the workshop. Since we had only one hour of class time, only two of the group members were able to perform their workshop today. Seojin brought us a chair duet that two of the members are seating on the chair together and trying three gestures each time. This includes the skill of kinesthetic response that I have to respond to other member’s gestures after they do three different movements. If we get familiar with the gestures by repeating them over and over, I can change the speed of the chair duet based on the speed or the mood of the song. Chaeyeon’s duet was that she suggested to us a sentence such as, “Monkey is climbing a tree and found out that there is a banana on top”. Then, we needed to express that sentence with our body and let other members guess what the sentence is. This helped us to express ourselves in a freer way and made us know what our strengths and weaknesses are. Today, we started to decide the starting point and tried to choreograph the first scene. I suggested the starting point “Belief” and since other members agreed, we decided that our main starting point will be a belief. We separated each scene one by one and made different beliefs, such as belief in God, belief in myself, belief in a leader, and belief in love. ‘Belief’ should not always be positive, so some scenes decided to be negative about the experience about the belief. The main message we want to deliver to the audience is the question, “What do you believe in?”. We are not in any positive or negative aspect of the topic, that we just want the audience to think about this. To start with, my scene is a belief in God, which is the first scene. I researched about the holy song that matches well with the mood and choreographed the first 30 seconds. I was inspired by the praying gesture and tried to repeat that with recycling and transferring.

Today, we did Geo’s workshop. Her workshop was the expression of emotion with a face mask. She made a total of five masks, which are sad, happy, fearful, angry, and anxious. By wearing that mask, we needed to express the emotion one by one. For example, if I try to express the emotion of anger, I have to be angry at one object and express the furious feeling by screaming, heating, or stepping on it. After doing this one by one, we changed the mask and tried to apply some verbal action. We shout at each other, cried, and also laughed without being embarrassed to be confident and express the real emotion that comes from the deep heart. This made the teamwork to be tighter and made us warm up faster than other activities. Moreover, by improvising the scenario, I was able to kinesthetically show what my ability is to other members.