Acting classes @ Substation

I never heard much back from Dreamforest, who don’t seem very proactive in promoting their acting courses, but I’ve just heard from a reader that the Substation is starting a course in acting. I can’t make it, because they clash with the qigong classes I’m taking at Nam Wah Pai, but I post the details here in case anyone else finds it useful. Thanks for the tip, Anil!

Acting Workshop

Introduction to Acting is tailored for anyone who wants to learn the basic skills of acting.

* Venue: Classroom 2
* Fees: $200 (8 Sessions for beginners)
* Dates: 3 Sep – 27 Sep & 1 Nov – 3 Dec, Mondays & Thursdays
* Time: 7pm-8:30pm
* Instructor: Wong Kwan Han

Students will learn the basics of projection, articulation, phrasing, prose and verse readings, physical language, motivation, body awareness, and acting out a scene. Participants should be above 14 years of age. Proper breathing, centering, articulation of consonants and vowels, as well as techniques of reading and acting out loud from a text will be taught.

Wong Kwang Han is a founding member of a multi-disciplinary arts group, Aporia Society. Trained in speech and drama at London College of Music, some of his acting and directing credits include nominations for Best Script and Best Actor Award for Urban Conversation 1 at the Life! Theatre Awards 2001 and Best Staging in the 1993 Drama Competition held at NUS. Throughout the years, Aporia Society has worked with many other theatre companies, performing in the 1990 International Youth Theatre Festival, 1998 Indian Theatre Olympiad and 1998 Shanghai Experimental Theatre Festival. Other productions by the company include Tramps Like Us (1997), Life is An Angel (1998), Vermeidena // A [void] (1999) and City of Men (2001). Kwang Han is presently working on two feature films.

Want to learn to act?

I’ve mentioned a few times before that I’m hoping to attend an acting course with local media company Dreamforest. The course is six months, once a week. It covers all the usual voice training, improvisation, etc, as well as singing, dancing, and hosting, to cover a full range of media skills. I’ve just spoken to them, and the course keeps on being delayed because there aren’t enough applicants… they need two more people.

So, if you’re in Singapore, and fancy learning acting and media skills, leave a comment or send me an email….

Review:251

I went down to the Esplanade yesterday to catch Toy Factory‘s production of 251, the story of the second-most famous Singaporean, Annabel Chong. ‘Annabel Chong’ was the stage name of Grace Quek. I went along with a Singaporean friend who knew Quek at school, though not well. I’ve never seen any of Chong’s “performances”, but I did catch the documentary “The Annabel Chong story” on TV back in the UK several years ago.

The play was  both braver and more moving than I’d expected. Grace/Annabel comes over as an almost tragic figure. From her childhood, she’s manipulated and directed to fit other people’s wishes; she’s gang-raped, betrayed, cheated, ‘exorcised’, and never able to be herself. Even when she resists, and strikes out on her own path, other people leech off her talent, and the betrayals continue. By the end, though, we’re left to recognize her talent, and determination to be true to herself, no matter what.

The ‘story of her life’ aspect of the play pushes a few boundaries for Singapore, I think, in its simulation of multiple penetration and other sex acts. However, when Singapore has allowed Crazy Horse to open up here, and is relaxing its censorship of Hollywood films, this isn’t as radical as it might once have been.

What to me was a little bit more sensitive was the political comment. I was going to say something about this, but in a week when discussion of past political events has been banned, and members of the European Parliament forbidden to speak, I think I’ll choose not to.

I’ll just say that I thought it was an excellent performance. There was some evidence of nerves, as some actors occasionally stumbled over their lines, but nothing that detracted from the message of the play. It was thought-provoking in many ways, and used the story of a troubled Singaporean to shed light on identity,  the struggle for self-expression and the cost and pain it can bring for both protagonist and supporting characters, and where Singapore is coming from and going to.  The cast do a great job, and Cynthia Lee is excellent in the lead role. The sound and set designers should be praised as well, in particular the highlighting of numbers at every stage of the play, which sheds light not just on the record-breaking number of sex acts for which Annabel is famous, but also on Singapore’s obsession with statistics and world records of its own.

251 has been sold out for its entire run – deservedly so, not just for the nature of its theme, but for the strength of the production and its message.

The stage no nearer

Ho hum. I’ve written several times about Dreamforest, the media production company who run acting and performing classes. I’m interested in their “I can perform” course, which runs for several months, and covers singing, dancing, and hosting, in addition to the acting base. When I popped into their offices in January, I was told that the next course would kick off late February/early March. Although they said they would contact me, I never heard back from them or got any reply to emails, so I decided to follow up with a call today. I guess there hasn’t been much demand, as they are now looking at July/August…. Oh well.

Miscellaneous links

A couple of links from recent browsing that are related to things I’ve been writing about, but don’t warrant full posts:

• Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches writes about the Theatre of Engagement. She includes a quote from Peter Brook that touches exactly why I’m toying with the idea of taking acting classes:
  

  “Theatre exists in the here and now. It is what happens at that precise moment when you perform, that moment at which the world of the actors and the world of the audience meet. A society in miniature, a microcosm brought together every evening within a space. Theatre’s role is to give this microcosm a burning and fleeting taste of another world, and thereby interest it, transform it, integrate it.”

• The guys at Piper are studying the knife-fighting techniques of South African convicts and gangsters. From a post at We Make Money Not Art, I’ve found a series of photographs taken of life inside a Cape Town prison by photographer Mikhael Subotsky. Very interesting background information.

A visit to Dreamforest

I forgot to mention that last Thursday I called in to Dreamforest, to have a chat with them about their acting courses. The office is tucked away in a small courtyard off Prinsep Road, not far from the Paradiz Centre. If you don’t already know where it is, it can be a little difficult to find! Anyway, find it I did… eventually, and talked for a while with Nicholas Tan.

I was actually half-ready to sign up for the short “I can act” course, which starts tomorrow. Given that there are big changes about to happen in the near future for me, our conversation gave me pause, and I decided to reconsider. The short course seems to be more slanted towards the development of self-confidence, which isn’t what I’m looking for. The 6-month “I can perform” course may be better for me, given that I’m looking to explore acting as a tool for exploring the concept of ‘identity’ and ‘role-playing’. It’s more expensive, of course, but the fee can be paid in installments.

The next “I can act” and “I can perform” courses will begin in late Februry/early March, which may suit my timetable better – and also gives me time to think a bit longer about what I would want out of the courses. There will be some free demonstration sessions, and Nicholas says he’ll keep me informed about those. If I go, you’ll be the first to hear what I think, promise

All the world’s a stage…

I once saw an empty doorframe, standing upright on a beach.

A few years ago, in what for me were the bad old days, I was walking along a beach just before dawn. It was a pebble beach, not sand, and kind of near town but still a bit out of the way. It was on my way home, though, and that’s where I was going. I’d spent the night out with friends: drinking, partying, talking about all kinds of stuff, and – this being a cold autumn – occasionally hiding out in public shelters to avoid the rain showers, and singing hymns because the signs on the wall said HYMN SINGING ON SUNDAYS.

So anyway, I got tired and decided to go home and, as I said, I had to walk along this beach to get home. There was nobody else anywhere nearby, this being 4 or 5 in the morning and all, and there was that eerie, otherworldy feeling you get when there’s no sound at all except the breakers and the hissing of the water pulling back through the rocks and your head’s full of silence and hymns. And, behold, there was this doorframe, standing upright and empty, in the middle of the beach and facing the waves and the great wide horizon.

If I had stepped through it, would I have been in the same place? If I was in the same place, would I have been the same person? I don’t know. I didn’t step through it. These are questions worth asking, though. They’re worth asking, because a doorway in the midst of wilderness taps deeply into our sense of myth, and draws upon our millenia as a species of asking questions about what on earth is really going on here. It doesn’t belong – but why not, and why is it there? If it’s here, maybe it’s for a reason. Maybe it hasn’t just been washed up by the sea and put upright by who knows who. Because our reality is artificial and constricted. William Gibson described cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination” but the description is just as apt for “the real world”… whatever that is. It’s a liminal experience.

A solitary doorway on the tideline challenges the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and about the world we live in. We act according to unconscious streams of thought, and sometimes we encounter something that resonates, and we feel compelled to act without really knowing why.

That’s why I feel that I need to take, ahem, acting classes. I’ve known for a long time that very little is real – or, at least, as real as we like to think it is. Like all of us, I have several narrative versions of who I am; some are mutually incompatible, but they are all true, none the less. (I put it down to reading Michael Moorcock‘s Jerry Cornelius quartet at a young age).

Where do these stories come from, and what lies underneath? Studying baguazhang and taijiquan has helped, and is helping, to discipline and understand my body and, through the body, my mind. Studying Buddhism and meditation helps me to understand the mind and, through the mind, my body.  What’s lacking is a way of systematically examining the ways in which I interpret myself to the world, and the ways and means I employ to sway and motivate other people.  Seeing an advert for acting classes has triggered a response: I think this could be a really useful experience in terms of personal development and give me insight tools that I’m lacking(and, to be clear, my less-spiritual MBA self also sees advantages).  What do you think? Details are here.

Acting update

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was thinking about starting acting classes. It’s something I’ve fancied doing for a while, though it’s never been a high priority. My flatmate way back in my undergraduate days was really into the am-dram society, so I guess it’s been lurking at the back of my mind since then. More likely, I’ve been surprised by the number of acting opportunities I’ve seen advertised in That’s Beijing – it almost feels as if there’s a window of opportunity right now; who knows where it might lead? More realistically, I don’t know: it seems like acting might develop a lot of useful skills, in things like voice training and projection of ‘presence’, as well as being an interesting experiment in playing around with ‘identity’ and perceptions…

Round about the time that I heard Alex Kozma wouldn’t be coming to Singapore to teach bagua for a while, I saw an advert for acting classes run by Dream Forest (beware of annoying Flash-based site). I did arrange to go and watch a class, but had to call it off at the last minute when a friend needed a shoulder to cry on. Another advert last week offered a free taster class; I’ve booked a place on the next one, which will be in January. But… I was having a drink with some people who are all now, or previously, media types…. I mentioned the class and they kind of grimaced at Dream Forest’s name, and suggested I try Mediacorp classes. I don’t know if this is just professional rivalry or what, so I’ll still attend the free class. It at least got me searching for other classes. I can’t see any evidence that Mediacorp run any, and the only other classes for adults seem to be by Centre Stage. Can anyone give feedback or suggestions for classes?

A bagua main role is delayed; an understudy appears

Hmm, a little bit of a disappointment… Well, quite a big one, if I’m honest! I wrote about how I attended a weekend bagua workshop a couple of months ago; it was with Alex Kozma, who’s been studying bagua for about twenty years, I think. I really got a lot out of it, and even that short couple of days really gave me a lot of insight into the theory and practice of baguazhang. He was planning to come back and run some more training sessions, in Cheng style, and perhaps Yinfu as well. It would have been particularly good for me, because he would be teaching in English, hence able to cover the gaps I’m encountering with Ge Lao Shi due to my bad Mandarin.

Unfortunately… I just heard from Alex; due to unforeseen circumstances, he won’t be able to make it to Singapore for a least the next few months. Drat. I was looking forward to training in bagua with him and Ge Chun Yan in parallel… Oh well, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe next year, then…

So… bagua study for the medium term will be solely in the Cheng style as taught by Ge Chun Yan, unless another bagua teacher turns up – which is unlikely. I might start taking some taiji lessons again, but the clash with my Mandarin classes mean I can’t go back to the small-class sessions that Rennie Chong runs (and which I really enjoyed and found beneficial). I’m not going to go back to non-Chinese IMA; I tried that, and found that the cultural clash and differences in mindset were too broad (zenmindsword had a very good post about that, which I was meaning to comment on…) .

But… a candidate for my budgeted time and money presents itself: acting classes…. Dunno, I’ll need to check it out, but it could be interesting…