Tranformasian

Transformasians:

I can't necessarily compare this APAC theatre to another one due to the fact that I haven't attended another one, but what I can say is that I thoroughly  enjoyed it. My muscles may be sore, my neck may not move and my work desk has homework piled up to the sky, but I am content, knowing that I have learned so much from the last four days. It would really be difficult to describe the entirety of APAC. So much was happening simultaneously that I'm not sure if I'll be able to share as much as I want to. So I decided that I would give a brief overview of what happened, offer a few of my favorite scorched moments and tell you what I ultimately take from this experience.

I would like to offer a little prelude to our APAC theatre experience. When you think of masks, you usually think of wooden, plastic or rubber molds that resemble faces. Some have vibrant colors, some have distorted facial structures and others are neutral. One mask that we often don't necessarily include in our vision is our own faces. Masks are supposed to disguise our identities. Masks are supposed to hide the face we were born with. What I can tell you about the face mask is that it does exactly that. It's like all masks. It can distort reality and emphasize/dramatize certain expressions or characters. The great thing about this mask is that we can change our mask without taking it off.

Creating these emphasized expressions on our faces though seemingly simple and facile was perhaps the hardest thing I had to do that day. We had to surpass the impossible and extend the possible movements that could have been done with our faces. By the end of the exercise, I'm pretty sure most of our class except for maybe those who participate in athletics had beads of sweat pouring down his/her face. It was an activity that stretched our faces as high, far, wide, low as it could go. And looking at it as an audience member, I was able to find that the piece, though grotesque was beautiful. Let's take for example, Reca's expression of happiness during the exercise where we had to walk forward and progressively exaggerate the emotion that we had to portray. Reca was contorting her face in ways that I did not think were humanly possible. And this act of pushing the boundaries and showing us a different side of the human face really allowed me to appreciate and admire the possibilities of our bodies.

We then moved on to try a side of Butoh that we hadn't necessarily experienced before. We were more accustomed to the slower, more solemn Butoh, but the activity that awaited required more movement than any game/warm up in P.E necessitates. Building upon the mask work we did, we learned how to perform the Butoh scream/Butoh mask. It's essentially rolling your eyes to the back of your head, opening your mouth as wide as you can without showing your teeth and staying in that facial expression for the duration of a performance. Boy this was difficult. My eyes started shaking and my face could not hold that position for a long duration of time. It's hard to imagine doing that for more than 5 minutes let alone an entire performance. What came after, believe it or not, was even more tricky.

We followed an abstract storyline of the story of Dionysus, the God of wine and fertility (shh sex). Two movements I really want to focus on: the guppy and the pulse. I legitimately could not do the guppy for more than two minutes. Maybe. With flat feet on the ground, and squatting, we had to hop from place to face (with the Butoh mask on while swaying our heads back) occasionally letting out one bigger leap into the air. While this was happening, we had to make figure eights with both of our hands at all times. Let's just say that my legs were very very sore the next day. The pulse was assuming a position where we had our butts risen to the air and jumping up and down making it seem as if we were humping the air. Whilst this was happening, our partners were viciously rocking their heads left and right as if they were devouring our bodies with their teeth. This story followed very figuratively the characteristics of Dionysus. I thought it was creative and difficult to manifest - a faster paced Butoh from what what we are used.

This theatre class was such a great opportunity and opening for APAC theatre. It prepared us for the new, different events that we would partake in throughout the weekend.

Our APAC theatre was separated into 3 main days:

Thursday - Taster sessions/School performances

Friday - Ensemble sessions/Tour of Korea

Saturday - Ensemble sessions/Breakout sessions/Performances

Scorched moments of this weekend:

- The tableau created by the UNIS group. The final picture of the bird soaring up in the air was so beautiful.

- Scatter my ashes, throw them in the air. Lord, cause I know where all my ashes are. This song was stuck in my head for the entire weekend.

- The rhythms of the Khatakali stomp.  Da Da Din Da. Very powerful images along with a very powerful soundscape.

- The beating of the drums in the Korean performance we went to see. The women in the back creating rhythms whilst dancing while the men lined up in the front slowly kept the beat.

- The beauty of Korea that I hadn't really experienced before: Insadong, Kyungbok Palace and the cultural activities we partook in.

- The wave --> the drool, the effort. I thought how much effort they were putting into their performance was beautiful.

- How much fun the cast of the Talchum group was having.

I learned so many things over this APAC event. The focus moved from the mouth to the body - the beauty, intricacy and effectiveness of this transformation. The coherence of the cast and the skill of meeting new people.  Pictures to come.