TAPS - Day 1

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First of all, I would like to say that if you ever want to speed learn your way through drama, actively USE your drama skills, EXHAUST your drama skills and make tons of new friends, TAPS is the way to go. :D. It was loads of fun and the learning was soooooooooooooooooo good. People here know how to build from one small activity and lead it to another. It was awesome and totally inspiring. I would do it all again, in a BETTER way, if I could, not that the way it DID happen wasn't awesome, but so much was going on, you forget to remember the rest that you learned. I might have missed out ALOT of activities we did if my memory is like how it was a few days ago, so forgive me if i leave anything out. Most importantly, I learnt. I lived. and now....I reflect *huff + puff* haha

Ok. first of all, we start by all gathering in this conference room in Copthorne. As usual we enter noisily but Mr. Moss immediately shuts us up and uses hand signals to get us to follow him. Ok. this is a workshop. so follow! he did mostly streches and warm-up exercise which I notice they do ALL the time, they make sure the body is in good condition. awesome! So we strecth and do weird things like make stupid sounds and slap ur ass (typical Mr. Moss) but it was all in good fun. Ms. Jo, my ensemble leader took over next and this is cute dance/song, it was fun Kum-ba-yah-kum-ba-yah-kum-ba-la-vista, OHHHHH-oh-oh-oh-oh-la-vista, Kilameeni-desameeni-awalawalameeni, OOO skilliyada-ayada-ayada-OO. this is how it goes, i spell wrong, but i sing right. haha. once again, impression writing, i'll never really get it right anyway. next was the "enlightened being"game. CUTE. STUPID and so totally random. Come to think of it, i think this was an intro to acting, as little acting was involved in this. we start as eggs and make sounds as eggs, we then go find other eggs and play rock,scissor, paper with them. winner evolves, loser go find other egg to ATTEMPT to evolve. haha. after the egg is the chicken! easy sounds to make. but after that is the dinosaur, haha. was tempted to start acting like a friend I know that looks like a dino? but emm....ya, drama workshop. hee hee. So evolving continues to cave man, humanoid and then an enlighted being, that sits on the floor, in a lotus position, and is like in a trance, hummmmmming and all. meditating, yea thats the word. I evolve quite fast actually! woohoo! were part of the beginning few that sat down and started humming. poor ppl who were last. pitiful! LOL. not really. anyway, advancing on to next game! It was educational, inspiring and self-searching. It was done by Sherri, the x & y game is what I'm gonna call it. X being your interest in a certain area of activity and Y being proof and evidence to support how much you love it and are good at it. She asked many questions, and people mostly grouped together, writing, acting, directing, costume designing, made me realise, my knowledge in theatre is EXTREMELY shallow. People there are REALLY REALLY into all these stuff, and I'm just in it for fun? oooo. Last game, i think? Head-to-head game. First we find people we don't know -easily, they come in like room fulls- ask their name, and start! haha. head to head, literally means head to head. you touch head to head with a person u know NOTHING about. there were knee to knee, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe, NOSE TO NOSE (haha. I was laughing for the poor pairs of male & female- how awkward) and eyebrow to eyebrow. LOL. i did that with Ed. He's a cool guy so, it was ok :)thenn...PEOPLE TO PEOPLE! and we change partners. fast and quick way to get to know people. interesting! i know! well thats TAPS.

Next up, splitting into emsemble groups. We start off again by REALLY introducing ourselves, The Ball Game. Throw the ball, say your name and remember the name of the person who threw it to you. This begins randomwly, starting with Jo throwing it to Amrit, then he throwing it to another girl, and on and on. Slowly, names register in your head. then she asks us to reverse the order, as in start al over again, remember who you threw it to and throw it again according to sequence. Em, whoa oh, i forgot who i threw it to >_< until now i still dunno for sure her name, but I call her Mary :). so we throw, and then Jo picks up four more balls. five balls flying in the air is just amusing and fun. well, that was the icebreaker for the day, cute fun simple. then we did another game, first we start by looking down on the floor, then look up and LOOK into the eyes of someone else. if the person is looking back, sit down. This was to practice "clocking" a thing I learnt about grabbing people's attention and just LOOKING at something. its cool. so that was the next game.annnnd next we had the 1,2,3 game. Its a game between 2 people. Say I am A and my friend is B. I say 1. B says 2. I say 3. B says 1. and so on. It was abit confusing cause, uneven number against even number? yikes. but we got it down, me and Mary. oh yeaaaaa. Next we had to substitute number 1 for a word, number 2 for a sound and number 3 for an action. HA HA HA HA HA. what a hilarious sight! i ended up doing the action for everything i said. LOL. The again, we did another round of head-to-head, BUT this time we had finger buddies, knee buddies, elbow buddies and leg buddies. It was funny cause, we started out simple, only 1 buddy needed then Jo asked us to find our knee AND finger buddy a the same time. HAHHAHAHHA. we were a tangled clump in the middle of the room. cuteeee. very cute.

OH I LIKE THE NEXT ONE. we formed a circle in the room, and imagined having a map right in the circle. She asked us first where we were born, haha! so happy to walk over to the UK. Then the question about what country we were researching on. Lucky Ms. Marshall gave us this topic (phew!) and I did vietnam. water puppets~ other people were doing really AWESOME stuff, like the death drama stuff? and the doll house? OH DAMN. niiiice! Then she asked us about asking questions. The open questions and the closed questions. open being questions subject to opinion and closed being questions with only 1 answer. Eg. What did you think about the last play you saw? - open q. What play did you last see? - closed q. So we once again, we got partners and started the questions! wheeeee. the asking wasn't really such an impact on me, but this one guy i met, Vardaan, actually i didn't have to ASK him at all! he was like- oh i'll just tell you about it ya?- LOL. I soon found out how much he really loves himself. Em, so yea, through that exercise, we learned more on how to ge indepth learning on our Research Investigation (RI) its like a project we gotta do for drama. Well thats ok, since researching means online time. HEE HEE. Next one was interesting, we had to walk, focus on an empty space we would like to fill and walk towards it. When Jo says stop, we have to stop and......yea stop. freeze. There is music, so the walking isn't boring. Then after many rounds of that, she asks us to not stop immediately, but slow down our movements and be aware of others and STOP at the same time. As hard as this sounds, its really easy because of the feeling and intensity in the room. You just somehow KNOW yea? they we start. Soon, Jo tells us that she isn't gonna tell us at all when to stop, just slow down and stop when we feel like it. oooo. again, that feeling that makes you just stop. and I felt like i had to be aware of my surroundings and learn to trust people around me. Thats all about acting, being aware and trusting. So tiny exercise cultivated that feeling, hmmmm...good feeling :D we also continue by ALL of us freezing, and only a few moving.LOL. this was amusing because, how are we gonna choose who moves? once again, FEELING & trust. whoooaaa. nice, we start with one. then slowly two, then three and so on and so forth. Totally fun and lost of earning in this little simple exercise. ME LIKEY ALOT. We also walk then when Jo says stop, we close our eyes, Jo says a name and we point in the direction the person is at or so we think. This is to test for aware you are of your surroundings and yea, i got none right. Gotta work on that observing skills yea?. after that, we switched from stopping to clocking. walk walk walk - CLOCK - walk walk walk again - CLOCK. haha. i love to clock other people. its fun. especially vardaan who clocks as if he's burning holes in your eyes. haha. he's very funny. Oh wait, this might be in random order, but we also did the City Experience tour. How nice, my project with Tilly and Mark is on now!

So we go on the buses and it is scorching hot. AND people realise this. We walk, its boring, my group loses half of it, me on one side Mark, Tilly AND Mr. Moss on the other. I FREAK OUT. lucky Mr.Moss comes to save :D so we walk through little India, they get Henna (indian tattoo) and we eat at Kapitan's. Yeaaa...pretty much it. it was boring! and the people thought so too. SIGHS. but but but! we find out one thing! ^_^ actually Mr. Moss did but anyway, I found out I will never ever be a tour guide. LOL. list of ocupation getting shorter here. oh yeaaa. hahaha. well, had quite a good time with them in Little India, eating, talking to Vardaan, Felicia, Katya and Lisa. They are good company :D

Now we get back, we are tired, exhausted and basically ran over-time. stupid Little India and my no-sense-of-direction-ness XP. After getting back, i think we did this activity on Birth. first acting activity so we are SO full of energy. I pair up with......Mark, Felicia and Vardaan. its supposed to be about birth! but we do birth of a model. AHAAHAHHA. we just want to be different. ish. or was that only Vardaan? It was cool, the way we made it happen. Felicia was the model, and I was the kind-est judge. heeheheheh. Em....that covers most of it. You had to be there. THEN after that, we had to take a piece of movement (eg. -isms impresionism, creationism, realism.....) and apply it to our piece. pitch it, act it, then rationalize it. We did ok. and Vardaan is really good at being funny. LOL. Me and Mark pretend to have 2 models we hate, we fire them, they go to the opposite firms (my client goes to Mark etc.) and we actually like them althought their characters are so extreme. once again, tons of fun acting. I like screaming, and I don't know how to curse on stage! argh. other groups did - Ritual like thing from......uh, i forgot. Cool charlies-angel-like thing from angela and divida +++. Tilly and phil also +++ did ritual a cute birth cycle from Kathy, tiffany, ed and +. lol. Mark, Me, Vardaan and Felicia were the models, and.....i think thats it

We do this really fun thing, its kind of like goal dertemining but in a cool way. first Jo hands us tiny orange slips of paper. We write what we want to get out of the program and stick it on the wall. We do that and I realise my goal sounds obscene >_< "Body Positioning" haha. Felicia doesn't know it yet, but she laughed at mine.....hahahha. thats ok, i think its funny too :P Anyway, then, Jo asks us to make a still picture about what we want to achieve, I do calm-ness in like a yoga position. and....everyone else does what they want. then we combined with many other people. there were 5 in my group. and yea, these are just notes i'm taking, i'll rmb whatever the other groups did. We did a a shape of an M. and.....yea, those are the higlights. i feel abit achy now sitting here in front of the com typing all this down :S

one more thing. we find a spot on the carpet. A SPECIFIC SPOT. and make sure we can identify that spot again. This game was more of a energising activity, we seemed so sleepy then. So after finding that spot, Jo says out 3 things, like touch something red, lie on the floor, hug a person of the opposite sex.....etc we finish that then done! hop back onto the spot tha is yours. haha. learning tons of games from TAPS. sweeeet!

and hey! i think thats it!!!!
overall. FUN DAY. loving TAPS. and.........they have tiny hashed browns for breakfast. I WANT. ish