It was from a 2016 book: “Applied Theatre: Facilitation Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience”, by Sheila Preston. Chapter 1 presented a case study where:

a member of a mental health institution expressed his disquiet at the idea that other members of the group were happy to perform, in public, a play about the experience of mental illness. He felt uncomfortable with the association and that they would be representing “him”.

Indeed, any intervention – which may sometimes be a facilitated workshop, or a staged theatre production – may run the risk of reproducing dominant narratives, leading to anxiety and sensitivity among the disenfranchised.

What then is the role of a facilitator in this social and cultural system that surrounds the facilitator on all sides – whether at the family dinner table, or at the workplace desk, or during the morning commute?

I attended a workshop to find out – it lasted fourteen hours over two days, 10 AM to 5 PM each day.

The host, H.L., was candid about the setting of the workshop: “Workshops are romantic. They allows participants to meander on topics. After the workshop ends, the participants – and their accumulated know-how – are tested by the reality that awaits them outside of the workshop venue.”

The books referenced in this workshop did not make for light reading:

1. “Theater of the oppressed”, a book by Augusto Boal (a Brazilian).
2. “Pedagogy of the oppressed”, a book by Paulo Freire (another Brazilian).
3. “Games for Actors and Non-Actors”, by the same Boal.

Time does not suffice to elucidate the proceedings of the workshop in detail. Nonetheless I attempt a sketch.

The participants numbered about thirty. Most appeared to be in mid-career, whether as a facilitator of workshops within a large, top-down organisation, or as a founder of a small enterprise.

H.L. started the workshop by inviting participants to set the rules of engagement.

Two participants collaboratively volunteered the first rule: “Hold space for each other's choices”.

Another rule was volunteered: “have fun”.

As a group of strangers coming together for the first time, this first activity served as scaffolding for the next seven hours of the first day.

H.L. introduced the “banking” concept of education (from Freire's book) where students are seen as docile cabinets that store the knowledge that trickle down from the teachers' authority-position; think: large imposing teacher's desk in the classroom, and quite possibly a punitive device, such as a rattan cane.

But H.L. draws from Freire's idea of the problem-posing method: here is a problem that has emerged; how shall we solve it together? This dissolves the dichotomy between teacher and student. In Freire's words (as translated by Myra Bergman Ramos):

“He [the teacher-student] does not regard cognizable objects as his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students – no longer docile listeners – are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers his earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.”

H.L. has his own spin on this afore-mentioned “re-considering of earlier considerations” – he coins the term: Negation Of Negation. (A heady brew of words, for sure).

In other words, the facilitator considers the downsides of the participants' choices, and then performs an intellectual leap to re-consider his own thoughts about the supposed down-sides – what if I go along with the participants' choices? What choices would be lost? What would be gained?

This idea could certainly be lost in a stew of cerebral-sounding words that ring hollow for participants and clients of the facilitator, so H.L. has provided a role model during this workshop, by having all 30 of us engage in activities that involved our physical bodies. These were games titled: “Take my name”, and “Sword and shield”.

“Learning involves the body and the emotions,” H.L. observed.

After the games, we sat down and formed a pair to discuss what happened during the game. This was particularly insightful as every one of us (30 pax) had brought a refreshing perspective based on our differing professional experiences: for example, one was a theatre performer, while another was a social worker.

According to H.L., the praxis of building possibilities together in such a teacher-student collective exploration, comes from (a) action and then, (b) reflection.

There was certainly plenty of time for games, and plenty of time to reflect on how the game illuminated these aspects:

1. What did I notice about me as a person?
2. What did I notice about Facilitation?
3. What did I notice about myself as a facilitator?

In retrospect, I realise that the game serves as the problem-posing method. What happened in the game just now? How can we play better the next time?

This brings me back to the topic of this workshop, Critical Facilitation. Such a process of Critical Facilitation serves a dual purpose: (a) identifying the forces at play, in a oppressive dynamic – for example, to consider a dynamic between an alcoholic father, and his worker-children who toil away in sweatshops to send him money to feed his alcoholic addiction: there may be a toxic dependence on each other, and that is why the children are reluctant to leave: they rely on any crumbs of affection from the father, while the father is unable to find a job due to an economy that prioritises cheaper labour from women, and then he feels useless, and then he drinks to numb his pain.

A workshop setting (hopefully) allows the disenfranchised to build the world they live in, giving a voice to tensions that exist in this situation but which may have gone unheard in the outside-workshop setting. H.L. quotes Thomas Hardy here: “The caller always calls but is not heeded. That is why love falls through.”

Question: can the caller be heeded in a facilitated workshop?

But such a singular purpose is not enough. Critical Facilitation serves the second purpose of (b) imparting skills so that participants can make change after the workshop, as they return to their communities, in the hopes that they themselves can participate in such change.

A question for myself: what kind of skill might be useful to an adult child of an alcoholic father?

I think, perhaps that might look like instilling a greater sense of confidence in that individual's own gut feeling and intuition, which may likely have been buried under the shame of having been abused verbally and physically by the addict-father.

But, in the spirit of curiosity, and to apply Negation Of Negation, perhaps my above-ventured intervention could run the risk of being repulsively prescriptive – perhaps a facilitator could more skillfully serve the adult child by being asking what he, or she, wants – what she (i.e. the adult child) finds helpful and what she finds unhelpful.

However H.L. sounds a caution for any would-be facilitator, by quoting a Jewish proverb: “When humans plan, God laughs.”

This corresponds with the Biblical Book of Proverbs, chapter 19, verse 21: “Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.”

At this point, I want to end this short reflection by listing the questions that H.L. has invited us to carry out of the workshop venue:

1. What did this space just admit?
2. What limits us here?
3. What will you bring into your space of practice?

Thank you for reading.

#acting

A howl emerged from the character on stage. “You're a bag of rats!”

The character had a pot belly, wore a beard, and sported a mass of curly, rust-brown hair – and when he got upon his feet, after having lain down conspicuously, the audience could see, stretching around his corpulent belly, the waistband of his off-white underwear.

“My mental health is going from bad to worse!” he screamed.

The character was not in a monologue; for the large part of half an hour, he had been verbally jabbed, poked, and mocked by another character: buxom, blonde and lipstick-ed. And cruel.

Cue cruel laughter.

“It's one thing after another with you people,” this latter character said, in a whining voice. “And you always blame it on me.”

What a havoc-wrecking, mind-contorting use of the language of victims, to bully and further victimise the former character, who had finally lost his patience with the relentless verbal assaults. Was he wrong to erupt in rage?

Nestled among the smartly-dressed audience of about seventy people, comfortable in my seat near the stage (third aisle from the front), I believed him. It was realistic.

The characters had said before opening the scene: “This is a play. If anything on stage bothers you, this is not real.”

But even if the play features a group of actors living realistically under imaginary circumstances, as tutors of the craft of acting like to repeat as a mantra, the audience have palpably resonated with the chaos and emotional upheaval on stage.

Look! It is a parody. A parody of the infinite pinpricks that ensue from living in society as someone who looks conspicuously different: a stammering speech, for example. Or a pot belly. Or a hand that never stops twitching.

That was why the audience laughed. They recognised somebody in the mirror. The mirror that is the stage.

Once upon a time, in a kindergarten far, far away, a young boy loosed his faeces inside his kindergarten shorts. His classmate made a disgusted face and would loudly tell a parental figure about it, at the kindergarten gates. The kindergarten teacher smelled the faeces within the hour, and quietly decided to resign from the job as soon as possible – perhaps the next day. That young boy was five years old and his name was Derrick. Question: where is Derrick today, and does he remember that day in kindergarten?

Back on stage, the play ended with the sound of wind and rain. A character named DeathWeather clapped his hands and the lights switched off.

The popular king's military campaign ended with failure because the winter had proven too cold for the horses and chariots he had had sent into the northern country.

I am grateful today for: no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no food-poisoning (cue diarrhoea and vomitting), and no Covid lockdown.

There are doubtlessly multiple bad things in the world. But I am grateful that it is not worse.

I will tell my sister I love her.

• fin

Note: “As an ensemble of actors who identify as having an intellectual disability or as neurodivergent, Back to Back Theatre continues to prod and confront audience expectations and prejudices. Multiple Bad Things wades further into treacherous waters, with thrilling results.” (Quoting from a 2024 review by Tim Byrne from The Guardian).

#acting #PostPerformanceThoughts

Q: How do you handle fame? It's so easy to get lost in ego and fame. Bon Jovi said: “Fame is a liar and a thief. I've seen it ruin people. It is what I do, and I do it well, but it does not define me. I have a family, a business, and tennis.” Fame can be so destructive.

A: Don't define your worth based on who takes a photo with you after red-carpet events, or how many followers you have on social media. Find the people you look up to, such as directors or other actors, and ask them for their feedback on your craftsmanship as an actor. If you believe your own publicity, then you will also believe the negative comments.

Q: do you think your roles represent you as the person you want to be? You have worn many hats – you have been an actor, a producer, and a director.

A: [chuckles.] That's quite a meta- kind of question. [pause] I bring my best self to work. I show up on time. On set, I give everyone the time of day: the AD (Assistant Director), the ADPA (Assistant Director Production Assistant), and the caterer. There are so many people on set. And, I like tequila, [audience laughs] but 48 hours before a shoot, I avoid drinking. If you can hold your liquor, that's fine, but that's how I conduct myself. I don't know if this behaviour represents my race, my ethnicity, and my nationality, but that's what I do.

Q: how did it happen? How did you get inside the world of [redacted]?

A: Well, I met this guy, [redacted], in [redacted]. I don't know what possessed me, but I gave him a bunch of cards, and said, “Here are my head shots”. One year later, he called me up on a Thursday, and said, “The casting director wants to see you on Saturday, in [redacted].” Now, there was no way I could get from [redacted] to [redacted] on such short notice. And you know how casting calls work in [redacted], you have a specific time that you show up, say, 5.27 PM, and if you are not there, you're out. But, you know, my niece – she's here today, in the audience – and my mother, they went with me to the airport. They said, “It doesn't matter, the size [of your travel expenses]. This is your dream, right?”

So I flew over, I rented a car, and I went to [redacted]. And I was very jet-lagged, and I entered the room, and I saw ten other people, who all looked just like me. [audience laughs.] And, I have been directing for years, I haven't auditioned in a while, and my nerves were starting to get to me. And then I went into the room – there is a Flow state that musicians have, you know, where you just get lost in the music – well, I went into the room, and I said my lines, and then I left the room, and after that, I realised I couldn't recall what I did in that room. Not a thing.

And then I waited six weeks, paying for my lodging, out of my own pocket, and then they called me in for a second audition. And it gets even more nerve-racking, because you're closer now, but there's also a chance that everything could end for you, just like that [snaps fingers]. Behind actors' huge confidence is a huge sense of insecurity and fear. [audience giggles.]

And you think the Casting Director can get you in, but the Casting Director is just the beginning. You have to talk to the Studios, to see if they want you, and then you have to talk to the director. This director, [redacted], he meets people in person, for the smallest role. There was this character who has only one line in the whole movie – he says: [redacted] – and the director went to have coffee with him, just to hear him say that one line.

So, some time later, I was driving, and I got a call. And [redacted] said, “are you sitting down?” I said, “I'm not, I'm driving! But I will try to stop driving.” So I pulled into a gas station, and then she said, “You got it.”

And I don't have enough time to tell you everything that I have seen on set, the lovely actors I've met.

Sometimes I look at the sound stage, I look at the stunt crew, and I just let it all sink in. The night before, I'm rehearsing my lines in my head, and saying them out loud, over and over – so that it comes out as naturally as possible – but when I arrive on set, and see everything moving, I just have to let it sink in: “This is really happening.”

#acting

Of course, the behind-the-scenes crew, and not just the cast, are outstanding in their individual and collective genius – time does not suffice to list all their luminary contributions. Included in the crew are Rayann Condy (as Intimacy Director), and Matt Hutchinson (in the department of Puppets, Puppetry Design & Direction). And Lee Yew Jin (sound design), and Peps Goh (fight-choreography).

I would like to highlight the physical space as another actor in its (her?) own right. The venue is Fort Canning Park. As the sun lowered itself behind skyscrapers – which, in the blue light of dusk, glowed softly with a thousand electric lights – a couple of large birds (wildlife, not props) soared above the greenery. “Eagles,” my companion-for-the-evening said. What a strange sound they are making, I thought. I've never heard them vocalise before.

The show started after the emcee (CEO?) had thanked corporate sponsors profusely, and had invited the audience to donate generously.

Dusk gave way to night. Clouds obscured the myriad stars in the heavens above. And, upon the poor humans' perspiration-coated bodies, the outdoor air pressed in, like a heavy gloved hand, moist with extreme tropical humidity. The threat of mosquitoes was on humans' minds: tickling one's nostrils was the smell of mosquito-repelling fluid.

Suddenly, mid-way through the first half of the 90-minute performance, raindrops started falling into the electricity-illuminated night. Cue umbrellas from audience members: umbrellas, which, of course, blocked the view of people behind them, but where I was seated, no one complained – perhaps a testament to the gripping drama unfolding on stage.

The raindrops ceased. Lady Macbeth had gone on a monologue throughout the brief shower.

I should highlight the clever use of lighting: an illuminated platform underneath the sand-covered stage, lit sometimes blue in colour, and sometimes orange. If one covers the lights with layers of sand, the set looks like a desert scene, straight out of the sci-fi Dune movies. But wipe the sand away (mobilising a crew-member with a manual tool), and the orange glow, from the glowing platform beneath, looks like a horrible image of Hellfire as the witches cackle and preen before the anxious Macbeth: “Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.” (Act 4, Scene 1).

I loved the group-dances and the salutes. And derived pleasure from the “prayers” in an unfamiliar language – I wonder if the language was created just for this production, like how a new language has been created for the blue aliens in James Cameron's film, “Avatar”.

Overall, it was a night that I savoured.

#PostPerformanceThoughts #acting

It uses the gimmick of body-swap – once popularised in the movie, “Face Off”, featuring Nicholas Cage (1997) – but after reading it, I fear that I will be ashamed of the final work.

The lines are unnatural, although the use of slang is endearing. There is a definite clumsiness throughout the interactions between characters. “Real people don't talk this way,” I thought to myself.

Granted, the scriptwriter may be, quite likely, a 17-year-old youth, inexperienced in society, but low-quality work is low-quality work, no matter how one may try to find extenuating circumstances to explain it away.

Better to turn down this invitation in a polite, amicable yet firm way, than to do something that I will be ashamed of.

Synopsis:

Mother and daughter switch bodies for a day, and grow in their understanding of each other's struggles (in the mother's workplace, and at the daughter's school).

#acting

HCAC: private acting school with various short courses of styles and methods.

https://methodactingasia.com/

Nine Years Theatre: Actor Training

http://www.nineyearstheatre.com/en/class.php

Companies that have long term training programmes.

• Young and Wild by Wild Rice
• Young Co. by Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT)
• Buds Youth by Buds Theatre

Schools (Dip/Degree):

• Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA)
• Lasalle
• Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI)

______________________

The following links are for Acting News/Audition/Everything else:

Facebook artscomm https://www.facebook.com/groups/artscommsg/?ref=share

Facebook casting call https://www.facebook.com/groups/143232105689606/?ref=share

Telegram https://t.me/channelnewstheatre

Arts Resource Hub (there are helpful materials here as well) https://www.artsresourcehub.sg/

#acting

Games, and exercises, to build up confidence and reflexes.

• stand in a circle. Next person asks you: “what are you doing?” That next person has to do what you say. For example, you might say: “I am playing soccer on the moon.”
• enter a space. put in, or take out something. Exit the space. Then, the next person has to evolve the story.

Ways of using your body to convey feelings.

• disgusted: your body is tensing up
• overjoyed: you are walking on a bed of roses
• frustrated: your guts are twisting

#acting

1. Signed up for a course of study, at National University of Singapore. “GEK1055: The Theatre Experience”. (2014). Conducted by Paul Alexander Rae.
2. watched a play. “The House of Bernarda Alba.” (Produced by Wild Rice). 2014. Location: Drama Centre, National Library Board Building.
3. Acted in a short film, with Wong Souk Yee, and Jason Soo. 2014.
4. Watched a play. “The Skriker”. November 2017. Location: McNally Street, LaSalle College of the Arts.
5. Experienced Recess Time, by The Theatre Practice. 2019. Location: 58 Waterloo Street, Singapore.
6. Watched a recording of an opera. “Faust”. (Produced by Royal Opera House in the United Kingdom). 2019 (approximately). Location: The Projector, Golden Mile Tower.
7. Watched an opera. “Inconvenience of minor parts”. (Written by Felix Cheong). 2022. Location: Esplanade Theatres.
8. Watched a play. “Muswell Hill”. (Produced by Pangdemonium). 2022. Location: Drama Centre, National Library Board Building.
9. Exchanged functional e-mails with a certain Shaza Ishak, who works at Teater Ekamatra. 2022.
10. Had a brief chat with an experienced actress, Neo Swee Lin. 2022. (approximately). Location: an eatery named Orange And Teal, in a mall named Rochester Mall.
11. watched an opera. “The Butterfly Lovers”. (Produced by Wild Rice). 2023. Location: Victoria Theatre.
12. Enrolled in a short course on Introduction to Acting Techniques, by Darren Guo. 2024.
13. Sent a postcard to someone who works at Teater Kami. 2024.
14. Watched a play. “Playing With Fire”. (Produced by Checkpoint Theatre). 2024. Location: Drama Centre, National Library Board Building.
15. Watched a hybrid form of theatre. “Tunggu sekejap: the P. Ramlee suite”. By: Wild Rice. 2025. Location: Funan. (Someone else's review is there.)
16. Watched a play. “Macbeth”. By: Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT). 2025. Location: Fort Canning Park.

#lists #acting

the actors were L and H.

Darren observed their performance once, and then told them to perform again, but with a game in mind – an actor's game. L's goal is to get H to look at her for more than three seconds. H's goal is to give L as little eye-contact as possible.

They weren't very competitive in this game at first, but Darren stirred things by saying, “L, you're losing! H isn't even looking at you, he's just sitting there!”

L won the game. She won it by touching H's hand with her hand (with mutual consent among the actors, of course). I believe she made the skin-contact while speaking the line: “won't you think it over?”

H's response was an ejaculation – an ejaculation of eye-contact, I mean, (though whether there was indeed a ejaculation of seminal fluid, only H – and an omniscient God – knows.)

Darren said afterward, after the performance ended: “it is okay if there is romance or even lust. We are all adults here.”

L and H were maybe the same age as the young English-speaking Japanese soldier and the teenage Malay-speaking, Borneo-born, Chinese sexual slave, who appear in a sobering chapter in Swee Lian's memoir, “Tears of a teenage Comfort Woman.” (Swee Lian is a pseudonym).

How horrible to have your first sexual experience in a war-time brothel!

What was I doing in my teenage years? Playing soccer at lunch-time, among poorly-behaved boys. Performing on the harmonica, in a group. Preparing for examinations in Classical Piano Performance. Learning how to swim in a pool of water that was deeper than a human's height – and how to achieve faster speed and higher efficiency – under a coach's instruction. Watching movies in a group, legally or otherwise (memorably, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Final Fantasy: Advent Children.) Learning how to achieve victory over other boys in a game of Chinese Chess. (But, some of them, I could never defeat.)

#acting

“It is better to be a glorious failure than a mediocre success.”

Mediocre success hinders you from tasting glorious success. (Editor's note: Darren attributes this quote to the late playwright, Kuo Pao Kun)

“Everything is a transaction [a communication or exchange]“.

As long as you are within view of the Other – which is the typical situation of the average human in modern times – you are sending out a communication-signal, whether you are conscious of it, or not.

“I cannot emphasise enough the importance of awareness [as an actor's tool.]”

the onus is on the actor to engage in exercises that develop his own awareness, when he is absent from the stage/screen. But there is danger in over-stimulation of one's sense, such as inside a crowded shopping mall. (Darren confesses that the latter situation does drain Darren's energy quickly.)

“Think for yourself: How can you game the game? I never said you cannot play the game a certain way. [Within ethical boundaries.]”

Do not harm others. Do not harm yourself. Don't be an asshole.

“whenever there is a dialogue, you are doing something to another person. [Whether you are conscious of it or not].”

Be specific with your behaviour. That's the mark of a great actor, as compared to a good actor.

“Respect each other's choices.”

How should classmates – or co-workers – behave around one another, when working together to prepare a performance? (Throughout the entire process, from script-hunting, to rehearsal-planning, to stage-unfolding).

#acting