Prologue

So, it's all over now. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that I won't be with the same group of people doing the same thing that we did in the same space we were in anymore, but I am so glad that we did what we did. I cannot express my thanks and gratitude to you, Chris, because "thanks" just isn't enough. You've helped me grow not only as an actor, but also as a person. I pray that I will forever hold on to whatever you have taught me, and that someday, I will inspire others the way you have inspired me. Thank you Chris, for everything you've done for us this semester. Thank you for sacrificing sleep and time for us and for looking out for us and trying your hardest to make out lives easier. The amount of effort we see you put in is definitely just the tip of the iceberg, and I don't know how much is hidden by the water, but once again, I can only say, thank you.

Signing out,
James Lim

FINALS PRESENTATION HOMAIGOT IS HERE

IT'S TIME FOR THE SHOW HOMAIGOT HOMAIGOT HOMAIGOT

Okay no but in all honesty I was quite excited la. I felt like we were prepared and we each knew what we were supposed to do. When Chris put us on standby, I felt nervous (duh lol) but it was a good kind of nervous. I would even say that I was anxious to start the show. I wanted to show the audience what we had prepared, what we had learned in the past 3 and a half months. I couldn't help but feel sentimental that soon, all of this was going to be over. The classes that we'd get tense because somebody wasn't paying attention to Chris while he was speaking, the classes where we stood still for more than half of the class, the classes that didn't seem to make sense at that time, ALL THOSE CLASSES were the classes that I was gonna miss (and obv the fun classes la like the one we played amoeba, when we argued and shouted at each other trying to win people over to our side, the classes where we'd just talk about what we want etc etc)

BUT ANYWAYYYY, when the audience started walking in, I could feel the excitement in the room. The energy I felt from the audience was enough to motivate me to do even better. Whenever I looked over at somebody else's cubicle, I'd see them going all out. That was more than enough to push me to do even better than i had planned. The whole classroom was filled with voices, whispers, laughs, gasps, confused chatter, and most of all, it was filled with professionalism. 

I can't believe how amazing my classmates are, and how far they'v grown. I've seen people like Josh, quiet and shy and not willing to come out of his comfort zone, dance like a "ballerina". I had the pleasure to act with Sarah Marie, who seems like a nice, good, Christian girl; but when she acts, HOT DAMN, SHE AMAZING. My classmates, Sujatha, Catrena, Sam, Josh, WeiYee, Joy, Mia, Sarah, Christine, Brian, and Casey, were all so awesome tonight.

The four shows we put on didn't differ much in terms of what I learnt, but it strengthened what I already knew, which was that I was surrounded by some of the most talented people in MCKL and I'm so so so glad I had the oppurtunity to work and learn and grow with them. 

Class #21

FULL DRESS DAY!

Today was not exactly the best of days. I rushed to college after work and got into an accident while on the way here. But things could only go uphill from then, right? We ran through the whole show with our costumes and I DID NOT expect it to be so tiring, performing to nothing. Chris was tired and quite irritable (probably from his long rehearsals for Angels in America) so we tried our best to be as. . . irritating-less as possible. We did one run through and went home after that. I learnt that we should NEVER EVER EVER piss off a tired and stressed director of a 6 hour epic lol.

Class #20

Ms Kellie came in today! Chris played with our feelings lo I feel. He kept telling us that Ms Moey was gonna come for the preview. He lied. Ms Kellie came in and we held a preview for her. We showed her what we were planning to do and at the end of it all, she told us that she didn’t expect us to have put on a show like this. 

She was surprised that we managed to pull something like that off in such a short time. It was very motivating la honestly for me that somebody appreciated what we had done. This just made me want to do even better than I had planned in hopes of getting the same response from everybody else that would come to our show. DETERMINATION WOOHOO

CHOREO DAY

WAH THE DAY TO TEACH THE CHOREO IS HERE I KENNOT. DAHLAH ALL THE ASSIGNMENTS AND TESTS AND ALL WAH SHIAT I WANNA DIE.

But surprisingly everything went really well! Everybody had a lot of fun with the choreo (even though a lot of them had problems with getting the steps) and they managed to learn what I was trying to tell through the movements. The “dances” I thought were pretty meh were the ones that they liked the most HAHAHA. Interesting class la. I’m glad Chris pushed me to my limits to do this because I feel like I have finally stepped out of my comfort zone of not daring to take risks like this. This is, after all, what performing arts is about! To discover new things about yourself and to step out of our comfort zones.

Class #18

Chris did our blockings today woohoo. Yah but that’s about the only thing different that we did today compared to the class last week. We read through our scripts in the order that we decided this time, but in the positions that we put in.

Edit: Chris just told me that the space we’re going to be performing in is only 5 x 5 feet. HOW TO CHOREOGRAPH?! Honestly more stressed about the choreo than my script UGH STRESS.

Class #17

We started work on our scripts today! We read through each line written and tried to understand what was written. Chris told me that I was in charge of choreographing four dances for the class and that I had to teach them to the class on the 16^th. I know that nobody else in the class dances (not even for fun) and I’m damn scared that I won’t do a good job with the choreography, as I’ve never choreographed anything in my life before. I had less than two weeks to come up with the choreography and I wish Chris had given me a heads-up earlier so that I could be more prepared. But then again, I think he’s doing this because he believes that I can do it, and if he believes that, I should too, right? The whole class I was thinking about the choreography and what kind of movements I should include into the dances and I barely paid attention to what was happening around me and had to constantly pull myself back to the classroom. Damn I get distracted so easily it’s not even funny lol

Class #16

We got what we wrote back! We each received something somebody else wrote and he told us that our final presentation was for us to act out whatever was written on the papers with full blocking. There were a lot of words to remember and it was scary to think that our final presentation was only a month away, and that we only had 4 classes left with Chris, but he assured us that if the work was done, we wouldn’t have any issues with doing our best, which is what he was looking for in our final presentation anyway. It was interesting to read another person’s monologue and to see how my other classmates think. There were some pretty messed up things that some of us wrote, apparently, and I’m very excited to see what’s in store for us in the next 4 classes.

Class #15

We started class with Chris telling us that he was having second thoughts about the play that the class chose, which dealt with familial issues because of the crowd and people that might be watching the play. He presented his idea of carrying out an audience participative piece, where the audience will have to talk to us and maybe even act along with us. We were asked questions about lies and secrets and we were asked to write monologues about a secret and a lie. I didn’t know what Chris was planning but he did constantly tell us that he was attempting to make our lives easier by doing this. I trusted him and just went with the flow of things. This was one of the times when it was just easier to trust him and do what he asked than to doubt and try to make sense of what he was aiming to do because he IS after all, our lecturer. So yaahhhh! Trust is super important lo in this business.

Class #14

Chris brought in his books today! There were a shitload of them and he passed a book to each of us. The book I got was about a love story between two people but the way it was structured was to show how different sentences said could make huge differences in how the future could turn out. Chris pit us against each other and made us sell our stories to each other in hopes of gaining the favour of our classmates to do the story we got. 

I ended up going against Sam because both of us wanted the plays we got to be presented for our finals. The whole class ended up siding with Sam and I was honestly a little bit annoyed that they chose Sam’s piece because I believe that the book I was holding had more substance and was more interesting. But I guess I didn’t sell it well enough.

Class #13

Chris brought the scripts in with him for the telephone show thing. We had a read through and it was. . . interesting. A lot of us were super lost throughout the whole reading and at the end of the class, Chris told us that he was going to bring in his own material for us to choose something else. I felt that this class was pretty pointless la. If we weren’t going to do this play, we shouldn’t have even have had the read-through, but I guess Chris was just realizing that with the limited amount of time we had, we might not have been able to pull this play off to our best abilities. 

This be Chris

Class #12

And just like that, SEM BREAK IS OVER NUUUUUUUU. I can’t confidently and honestly say that I was 100% excited for classes to start again but I did have high hopes for this class as we were supposed to be introduced to our final project. We ended up talking about what kind of message we wanted to give our audience, and what kind of play we wanted to present. Chris introduced a play to us about handphones and told us that if we could make it work, it would be awesome. I think it was fine, but I was actually expecting to immediately start work on the play after sem break, but without material, we couldn’t start.

Speaking of telephones

MIDTERMS

IT'S THE DAY I KENNOT. Presenting my monologue was so scary especially because of what I wanted to talk about. To talk about something that I had hidden for so long from everyone was. . . something that I wasn't looking forward to la. I had second thoughts about whether I should proceed with the monologue I wrote or whether I should change something to make my message less obvious. I decided to just do what I had practiced with Chris and I sucked it up and manned up (cue Book of Mormon lol)

Turns out, nobody understood the subtext in my monologue, and they were all confused about what I was trying to say. I'm not very sure whether I'm glad or whether I'm sad that they didn't get it, but what's done is done I guess. No point changing anything. 

My classmates are brilliant though!! WeiYee was so expressive, when she described the scene at the restaurant, all of us could actually see what was going on around us. Josh's was heartbreaking, to hear his story of a lost friendship (and he was so nervous about his presentation of the monologue lol PSCH). My goodness to think that I have the privilege of acting with these talented people!!!

Class #10

Chris gave us the opportunity to talk to him about our monologues, in private. We ran through the monologues and talked to him about what we wanted when we presented our monologues. We went up to him one by one and had our own little session with him while everyone else prepared the more technical side of the monologue. When it was my turn to talk to Chris, I read-through my monologue first and when I finished, he hugged me because he told me he could relate to my story. It was then that I realised that I wasn’t the only person going through a struggle like this. He asked me what I wanted from my audience and how I wanted them to react to my monologue and once I had figured all those things out, my intentions for the monologue would become clearer and more honest. Once again, this class was about intentions and how to successfully get my message across to my audience.

Class #9

Today we wrote our monologues!! I think creative writing is definitely not something I have a problem with because the words just flowed out when I wrote. I wanted to write about something close and personal to me, thus I ended up writing about my past, and how I came to be who I am. It wasn’t something that was easy for me to talk about as it had always been a sensitive topic to me.

P.s. Since today's journal was pretty short, here's a picture for everybody out there. 

Class #8

We started class with a question: “Where are you right now?”

We stood in a circle and we were asked to walk from one side of the circle into the middle of the circle, pick something up, and walk to the other side of the circle. Some people were super creative with what they picked up. I remember Sam picking up a baby and Joy picked up a flower. It was really east to imagine where they were when they picked up the items they picked up because of how they walked before picking up the things they picked up. It was all about intention I guess. The intention of “manoeuvring through rubbish to pick up the baby” or “skipping in the park before seeing the flower”. It was a class more of an “intentions” class than a “where you are” class for me la honestly.

Class #7

Reviews are nothing to be laughed about. Chris gave us a huge-ass stack of papers about reviews and how to write a review etc. We were supposed to read an excerpt of Hamlet and the idea of having to discern what somebody like Shakespeare was trying to say scared the living hell out of me. But Chris explained that we didn’t have to dissect the entire poem because our course IS AFTER ALL Foundations in Acting, and not Literature. We could write our honest opinions in a review because reviews ARE after all what we thought of things. Quite cool la honestly this whole review business. (this is a review by itself ooooh)

*mindblown*

Class #6

we were amoebas for the day

Chris came in and he decided to do something totally wacky. We played some game about amoebas and whatnot. The whole class became one amoeba and we had to be one whole unit doing the same thing. If the leader decided to fart, the whole class had to fart with the leader. We were forced to work together with all of our classmates and I think that all of us became closer as an ensemble. Class was fun!!

Class #5

Like the week before, Tarrant came in and talked to us about another aspect of what makes a person, “what I want”. I don’t actually remember much from what we did except that we just talked and discussed about what each of us wanted from life (if I remember correctly). I think recalling that class is difficult for me because this class might not have appealed much to me. Besides, we had just come back from our long weekend and I was definitely not in the right state of mind to actually think properly. 

clearly i haz de dumb

Class #4

Chris came into class and we talked about what we learned with Tarrant in the class before. This class was the class right before our long weekend break for Merdeka so I was a little distracted thinking about what I was going to do over the long weekend and so I didn’t really pay attention. 

I remember standing in neutral again, and I think we played with our expression of emotion. We portrayed happiness, sadness, and anger all in different poses, without saying anything. I discovered that I find portraying anger was a lot easier for me than portraying sadness. I guess it’s due to the fact that I’m naturally a very “over-dramatic” person and I feel that sadness that’s over-dramatic is not real. The most common form of anger however, can be portrayed in an explosive manner. 

this is me lol

Class #3

             Today, we were introduced to character study. We talked about what it takes to create a character. Tarrant asked us what we thought being a person takes, and how the littlest things can affect a person’s character. We created a character and through that process we discussed what would make a person who he/she is. We started with the basics of what characteristics a person would have. From there, we expanded and dived deep into the characteristics of the person we created.

               

                It was an interesting class as we created a history and backstory for the character, and I feel that I’ve realised the importance of doing my research on a character before actually jumping into acting it out.