Back from IB Taps !

I am so sorry I haven’t been blogging for the last week, but I went to London with my IB Theatre class. Such an experience !

So here’s the story:

After the PSAT tests wednesday morning (which were horribly boring btw, except I liked the math part; it was actually easy for once) my mum got Sophie and me to the train station in Braine L’Alleud (5 min from school) and there we met the rest of the people and the teacher and stuff. My theatre teacher and a spanish teacher were the only ones with us, and they were sooo chill for the whole trip, couldn’t have been better.

Anyway, we took the train from Braine to Bruxelles Midi to take the Eurostar. Everything went good and we got on the train. Two hours.

Finally we got to London and everyone got an Oyster Card to top up when we took the tube so that we didn’t need to buy a ticket every single time… It’s actually really expensive to take the tube, 4 pounds for a single ticket… Then we took the tube to Russel Square where our hotel was, National Royal, which was normal, but huge. There were soo many people there. They had Ben and Jerry’s if you like that so we ate it 24/7 😀

Then we went to the Peacock Theatre to see Traces. AMAZING.

It was a devised piece of Theatre performed by real athletes, or circus people at least. They had basketball, gymnastics, skateboard and even classical piano involved. The music also fitted in perfectly which made it amazing cause I really think music and rhythm is important in a performance. And they did acrobatic stuff I really hadn’t thought of, but it was not only a circus, there was a meaning behind it which I thought really topped it. There was also a hilarious scene were a girl sat in all kinds of positions in a chair while she was reading. It really reminded me of myself cause I also kinda have that urge to just move in all kind of weird positions when I sit still and read. Haha, might sound weird to you. Here are some clips from the show and what they do even though we saw a slightly different one with another cast.

We actually talked with the cast after the performance and the (only) girl was actually so much more different than what I thought she’d be like. Interesting.

Just before I ate at some weird sushi shop, but people wanted to eat after the play and we (Sophie and I) just followed them. Others went back to the hotel… We had a great little night out 🙂

The next day, Thursday, we had to register for the workshops and stuff. So we woke up around 8 to take a shower and stuff and went to the American church of London 09.45. That was the first time we met the other IB Theatre students ! We did some games all together, I can’t say how many we were… I’d say around 200 – 300, and we were the second group so TAPS actually started the week before… And I think there was another group after ours as well. But it’s kinda normal there are many people taking an International program and theatre in that program. And the trip is obligatory… Anyway we did some cool games to get into the rhythm and stuff. After about half an hour of that we were divided into smaller groups. There was three other people from St. Johns in my group so that was good. But bad as well I guess, but I met lots of new cool people. We all went to a big house with small rooms with mirrors, basically rehearsal halls. The first exercises we did was just to get together and to get to know each other a bit better. Personally I think we did way too much of that… I think you learn and get to work well with others when you devise a piece, meaning you have to create your own performance with other people. You have to take others opinions into consideration, understand that you can’t only think about yourself and you learn how the others in your group think and what they are like. Anyway, after the first two hours or something we had lunch … So of course I went to Starbucks that was just next door 🙂

After  that we started making a musical. I never thought we’d be able to make that in two hours, but we did. We learned this simple song that goes like this:

There are so many colours in the rainbow,

So many colours in the sky above.

There are so many colours in the rainbow,

And I love everyone.

And then we decided the elements of productions, so the stimulus, the audience, perimeters, concepts, transitions etc. Our musical was based on a poem, The Giving Tree by Sheldon Allan Silverstein, (http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/60911-Sheldon-Allan-Silverstein-The-Giving-Tree) and it’s about a tree and a boy that grows older. As he grows older he cuts down more and more of the tree and uses it to survive. Then we divided into small groups and found metaphors, themes and stage types. Then everyone wrote down a way of presenting the performance and based on this we found out wether you were more metaphoric, theme based or staging; I went to the staging group. I had this whole idea of having a big tree in the middle of the scene and the audience would not be on the ground but around the trunk of the tree. The tree would then be shrinking throughout the whole play. And the apples that grew on the tree would fall down and money would start to grow. This was obviously impossible to do with our little room were chairs was our only set… But each group was then set to make either part one, part two or part 3 of the musical. So we developed our idea. Then we had a pause and after that we did auditioning for the main characters. So we learned what we should ask for in an auditions and some people got to choose the main roles. Then we started putting the different parts together and match them. The teacher then made the transitions and without having gone through it once, we did a musical in front of two people in two hours ! Amazing in my opinion. But I learned a lot from that actually.

Later that day we were gonna watch Danton’s death. Must have been the most boring play in my life. We were actually gonna eat before, but we didn’t have time, so everyone was starving after. So basically after the workshop we went to the hotel, quickly changed and took the tube to the National Theatre. Pretty far away actually, but on the way we saw the London Eye, Big Ben and stuff.

The play was about Robespierre, Danton and the french revolution. Most boring thing I’ve ever seen. People were snoring next to me … But I guess it is easier to compare good and bad plays then … It was seriously monologue after monologue and the set never change. The cool effect was the lightning. You could tell by the lightning wether it was morning, night, day, evening, outside, in a prison or in a court. But it was still boring. After we went to eat in this really weird place, tourist clubbing area haha. Men everywhere asking you to go to their club. HELLO, I’m not 18 ! Then we went back to the hotel and got some drinks there and stuff. Hehe. Pretty fun actually.

The next day I was freakin tired ! Haha, deeaaaddd. And it was freezing in London ! We woke up, ate the British breakfeast, oh, and two of the guys came with Starbucks to our room and woke us up! How nice is that!! That was amazing! All guys should do that haha. So tip to all boyfriends out there, the girl will love you for it ! 😉

The workshop Friday was about Laban (a Norwegian candy brand actually), a theatre practitioner. He (or she?) said that characters can be divided into direct/indirect, sustainable/quick, strong/light. We had to put ourselves into the group we thought we were ourselves. I had a hard time. Seriously. I think it’s not really Jing or Jang. You change all the time according to whats around you! But I agree that it can help you to understand the character you are playing in a play. So we did some exercises on that. Then we did stage combat. We learned how to fake a slap, pull/throw people to the floor, hit people and take them by the hair. That was so much fun. I worked with really cool girl. Our scene was a girl talking to a guy in a phone and the other girl comes up slaps her, she asks who she is talking to and the other girl slaps her back. Then they have a mini conversation where they slap and hit each other and it was sooo funny cause we exaggerated it a little. In the end one of the girls threw the other to the floor and started taking her by the hair. Looked horrible. But it was still funny. And it was really funny to watch the others as well. Haha. I laugh when I think about it. When people fail horribly and you just see how bad their fake slap is it’s freakin HILARIOUS.

Yeah we did some other stuff during the six hours of the workshops as well but I can’t remember them so it must have been boring.

Then we quickly went back to the hotel, chilled in 10 minutes and went to take the tube to watch Tribes. It was a really really funny play. It took a lot of time to get there though. We had 40 minutes to eat over there, a place where there was nothing, before it started. I liked how it was set though.

It was about a family where one guy, Billy, was deaf. It started of soo funny, the father was swearing all the time and stuff, and you found yourself (at least I did) in the same family situation. They were all shouting at each other making jokes, insulting each other, making fun of each other, being selfish. I did some further research and apparently the shouting is just a way of expressing love. Personally I don’t get that. I never express love to my mother if I shout at her… And then in the end the deaf guy suddenly turned into a criminal (too complicated to explain how) and there was a huge change in the play. The last part of the play I didn’t really like that much cause I was so confused about what was going on. But I really think we need to show plays like that to the world today so that we can understand the real issues of the world TODAY, not the problems during the french revolution; we don’t care, that happened ages ago and it’s over !

Then we went back to the hotel and had another hotel party ! 🙂

Saturday was the last day of workshops and we did one on Stanislavsky (a theatre practitioner) and we made some games ourselves. In the Stanislavsky workshop we were introduced to his theory. We did a relaxing exercise, where everyone fell asleep, to “let out imagination go free”. I was pretending to understand it all so well haha. Pretending I got so imaginative after the exercise. And the guy really believed me. It was really funny. Then we did some exercises to develop our communication with other actors. We had to send a color to another person’s eye and the person would get a “pop” and have the same color as the person who sent it. Haha. Sounds really stupid, but it actually worked. In a way though. I’m not really sure it’s true. Then we had to think of a movement (i.e. a little scratch on your nose or something) and then looking in to another’s person eyes and the person would do the movement. Thats pretty crazy. Some people actually made it work. So what if you can think of an answer to a test and send the message to another person? I asked the guy and he didn’t even answer me. But I mean it’s as stupid as passing a movement. Crazy ideas the whole thing.

Then we had lunch, me and my friend ate at this really nice place, le Pain Quotidien 🙂 And this is what we saw from our window:

He was soo creepy, checking out girl on the street! Eew!

After the one hour lunch we just did some fun stuff where we created our own games. Then of course we quickly went back to the hotel and out again. Time for Jersey Boys!! OMG what a musical ! I looooved it. In the end Sophie and I were singing like crazy, I just loved the songs!

It was amazing except we had the seat at the very back! we couldn’t see the faces of the actors and that made it boring sometimes. But the choreography, the costumes, the music was amazing. An enjoyable entertaining performance I’d say. Before that though I ate at an Italian restaurant. I love Italian food ! But something weird happened. There was two men sitting t a table next to us, and suddenly we realized they had just left ! There was still food in their plates and their glass of beer was full ! I was really amazed, we actually still have people like that in our society !?! But when I think about it, it’s actually really easy to do it. It must be a big fear of the restaurant.

Then it was saturday meaning no workshop the day after !!

Sunday we were supposed to wake up early to go to oxford street, but we got up at 11 instead :p Well well, but the problem was that we were going to see The Lion Kings at 15.00. We directly went to TopShop and stayed there in two hours cause then we had to get to Leceister Theatre in some way. When we got there we found out the play was actually starting at 14.30 and it was 14.25 … So luckily we were on time at least 🙂 The Lion King is an amazing show, but again we were all the way in the back! So we lost the beginning scene when all the animals come in and again we can’t see the face of the actors. I do however love the costumes, the music and the choreography. I was a bit disappointed by the voice of the younger actors in the play, playing Zimba when young… But I guess it’s pretty hard ! Then we went a little more shopping around Covent Garden and ate some dinner. We went back to the hotel and partied a bit more as it was the last night !

Met some random Swedish guys…

Monday we were gonna check out at 10, and I had my horrible alarm at 8 !! Hahaha that was hilarious, my roommates got pisseeed 😀 But then we got the news that the check out was at 11… Great ! But I went to buy some souvenirs to my sister and some magazines 🙂 Then we went to the V&A museum to look at the Theatre and Performance section. There was some really cool things there:

We also had private screening of A disappearing Number by Complicite… A really complicated devised piece hehe, but I bet live it would be much, much better. The sound of the movie and the filming was HORRIBLE. Which made it really boring to watch. But the concepts in it were really interesting. There was a woman that was really passionate about math, and she was always saying it’s the only thing that is real and it follows a certain patter. And this kinda reflects on life that maybe has a certain pattern. And there was projections everywhere, on the floor, on the walls, everywhere ! And there was this Indian sound rhythm going through the whole play like tagatagadam tagatagadam etc.  Really interesting. Then we had to leave to go back to the hotel and we left London! 😦

There was actually a train strike in Belgium just when we were going to leave, but our train was the only one that went, exceptionally, and that was just sooo lucky! So I got back monday night at 11.00 ! You can’t imagine how tired I was !

I went to bed at 01.00 that night. As well as yesterday… I had, and have sooo much work! Need to catch up for school and do plenty of assignments. But at least I don’t have school tomorrow… Parent teacher conferences. And tonight there is also a halloween dance at school. But I have handball practice at the same time! I don’t know what to choose! I haven’t been to handball practice for a week, but at the same time halloween dance is only once a year… We’ll see 🙂

Outfits of the last days:

This post took me one whole afternoon to write so I hope you enjoyed it! Now I’ve got to do so much work!

Have a lovely wednesday everyone ! Halfway through the week!