The time has come after a long entrapment of soul –the moments of excitement, nerve-wracking, and the unknown. Ayden had seemed to put himself in rather an oddly familiar room. He was in the space where faces were alien and filled with energy that lied dormant –ready to be exploded, he thought. The introduction of all the mad sacred and holy profane was stretched in front of him. It started with enthusiasm and it ended the way it started. How rewarding life was.
Paris has become his host country for a year to come while he was doing an exchange program under a famous academic institution. He had the privilege of taking a newly opened course at this very institution called ‘Theatre Workshop’. There, he learned the lessons, he appreciated diversity, and he indulged in ideas and cherished them with his fellow classmates. And finally, he discovered.
Terminal A: Zip and Zap!
After a communal ceremony in the beginning of each session he participated, which involved different archaic games. Sounds of ‘zip’, ‘zap, ‘woosh’, and latter additions of ‘zup’, salsa dance, zombie moves, and C3PO sounds, were added. Those were flying across the room in irrythmatic fashion. They bounced back and forth and recited repeatedly until they got tired, and people stopped them. At other times, they had invisible balls of different colors, also flying across the room with ecstasy. These have become Ayden’s and his friends’ anecdote. They became their identified source of interactions and familiarity. Bond slowly emerged out of this tradition.
A seemingly tense and unsmiling lady in her mid-twenties by the named of Paula, was made the instructor, and each week, apart from launching those exotic games, she instructed, scolded, and corrected them throughout the class. She scolded them some more — but it was all swell.
The first few weeks of the class was ridden by ‘improvisation’ and Ayden was simultaneously ridden by excitement and jitteriness. Everyone else in the session, he thought, seemed to have equipped with the theatre experiences that he felt somewhat intimidated by at first. But he was surely not the most timid one. He learned to act more and became daring like those comrades of his. Surprisingly, he gradually found the fun in doing it. He never thought he’d have liked the class as much as he did in the end. Although he first detested having to participate the improvisation, he tried, and he in the end felt as if he was riding a long roller coaster ride.
Interlude I
Since entering the institution of prestige, Ayden started to feel like there was much to be done each day. The responsibility became mounted that sometimes he wished he could have ignored them. Life was not easy as had predicted before as he entered this country. The city became his new escape, but at the same time it was not a comfortable escape when it sometimes overwhelmed him. The over-powering buildings and edifices along the Seine and big boulevards of Paris and the language spoken became a bewildering maze he was lost in.
It took him quite a while before he started to feel at ease and look beyond his confined reality. The city started to become smaller each day, those buildings did not get bigger and people did not speak twice as fast as they did before. Ayden learned to improvise his mornings by doing things in reversed order. For instance, he wrote a journal of predicted tomorrow and filled today with free flow of thoughts. He became less restraint and enjoyed his new beginning – just a bit more.
Terminal B: Act and Propose!
Power and representation was designed to be revolving themes for the class. The concept of ‘power’ sets itself in a rather broad conception as it encompasses many aspects in human life. However, the way power is represented, he thought, could make a whole different story. Ayden found this idea to be perfectly fitting for the class. The following class, after partaking in his favorite archaic ceremony, some of his friends and he had the chance to work together on a French play he was not made aware of. He worked on the first play titled Cyrano where he played a mad Cyrano in the following session. When it came to working as a team, however, Ayden found it quite a challenge since he personally preferred working on his own pace and rhythm. Besides, he often found others ideas to be inferior. Not only was that true for him, ideas arising from many parties could prove negative if not well worked out. Nonetheless, working together in what he came to appreciate did not take him long to adept and enjoy working with his different team members.
There is an incentive and reason in almost everything people behave and act in real life he contemplated. Presenting Cyrano however, Ayden found it harder to justify the actions of the character he played as. At the end of the day, he thought, characteristics of characters in the play are direct derivates of human experiences. He quietly found it amusing when thinking if cannot improvise one’s own life why not improvise a character’s. And the class offered this opportunity for him.
Interlude II
Prior to taking this class, Ayden had himself done quite a number of literature classes. Sometimes he felt frustrated having to deal with the fact that characters and situations were often viewed in a way they have already been as heavily interpreted by numerous readers. Although he had the chance to analyze in his own terms, he could not well express those elements like he was allowed to in this class. There, not only was he a reader, but Ayden was also a performer. He was enjoying it.
Terminal C: Direct and Stage!
It was 2:45 in the afternoon of Wednesday, Ayden realized, once again, he was destined to be in the attic room of a five-story building in his campus. He was rather late that day since he had to do some errands and prepare some props for his next proposition of a scene. The play went quite smoothly despite not having enough time to prepare and work as a group. It was the improvisation that, indeed, helped him. In this session, Paula shifted the focus to from proposition of the plays to directing. “Directing, directing, directing”, he thought. Before arriving to Paris, he had the chance to hang out with people in theatre community briefly a few years back. It was called ‘New City Collectives’ then. He suddenly recalled how he performed as a mime and drunkard in a circus-based play. He helped contributing in plotting the story-line. It was indeed a lively year for Ayden to have worked with people whom he had thought to be creative and exciting.
That week, Ayden had the chance to direct a few short scenes. He suddenly recalled how much he enjoyed directing. People back home always told him that he was quite thorough, very attentive to details, and possessed a “golden” standard. Some suggested that he should pursue a directing career. He could only laughed at it then. Most of his friends in the class had the chance to direct a play. Ayden found quite fascinating to learn how each of his friends responded quite differently to the task assigned by Paula. He thought that perhaps his friends back home were partly right. People are made to do certain things and they only know what they are apt to be good at when they were given the chance to do it.
Interlude III
Sciences Po. had happened to him, akin to the theme of one of his Theatre Workshop class he was taking, to be an institute of power. Given its prestigious history and successful graduates, the place has never seized to strut its name. Never in this world could he image a university whose students are also the promoters of the fashion. This goes without saying since Paris has been the city of Fashion. With its power and luxury, it is perhaps makes sense to see that the image of the institution is deliberately shaped and directed. Like plays and movies, a director of the institute remains important backbone that could characterize its success or failure. Pondering upon his previous Theatre Workshop session, Ayden began to implement the lesson in his own life. That is, he had unhurriedly held a different perspective in looking at his life ahead. He started pondering and weighing the possibilities of doing different things in life. Taking the past and the present lessons into account, he found there were many roads he could walk to. Somehow, I was clear; it was the point where he realized he would direct his own life.
Terminal D: Listen!
Going back to Theatre Workshop, Ayden found not only was the class interesting and practical compared to other classes he was taking, the class’ atmosphere was also familiar that he could from this point find his own comfort zone. The sound on water dripping through the pips in two corners of the attic classroom had become his own reminiscence.
In this session Paula reminded her pupils to listen.One needs to think when one directs, but one could not improvise if one does not listen. Paula took Ayden and the rest of the class into another dimension of the theatre world. To be a good actor, one also needs to be a good listener. To predict the probability, one needs to listen to pertain. And to convey a message an actor needs to act as if he was the audience himself. Through different experiments the class underwent, Ayden came to realize how he’d ignored so many little things that could mount significantly for him in life. He had concluded that people miss so many things in their lives just because they are inclined to think and speak what they think and forget to listen their thinking. A thought that is thoroughly listened is a thoughtful thought; it is therefore a better thought, Ayden reflected. In response to the session, the class had the time to do different staging especially from the audience’s perspective. Ayden had the chance to offer his ‘listened’ thought; he placed his audience in the middle of the play, allowing them to absorb the experience of the characters.
Interlude IV
The leaves withered, crying liberation,
They screeched in silence, neglected
Water ran dry, vaporizing dormant
The fall was falling in festive cheers,
Breezing through the ears of the blind.
Come winter come to kill the undead
Its melancholic shapes sparkle and revive,
Come wipe the worried and the bewailed
When the day rewinds, the hopeless will see.
The clock tick’d in the white dubious sky
Listen to the drips gently, they shouted.
Tomorrow came when the day turned pale
Soundless it came, to save the mourning soul.
(Ayden-- Dec 2010)
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