ReIsta Drama Weekend

I did enjoy every second on the stage.

 I took part in third Reista Drama Weekend, which was wonderful! On 25-27 both Pattaya & Bangkok students, who were interested in drama were gathered together. It was first time for me that I was going to met the students from the Bangkok campus, so I was really excited.

What were my aims?

My aims for this weekend was that I could deepen my newly learned drama skills, learn  about miming, physical theater, get more confidence and experience on the stage, and also of course meet new people and make some friends.

What did I do and what problems did I encounter?

On the first day of ReIsta  me, Gerda and Haik did a little performance for the opening ceremony.  I was really nervous before our performance as it was the first time that I was going to act in front of people who I didn’t meet before. But with the help of my friends I found the courage in myself and successfully did the short performance. After that we had warm up and  a Pizza dinner. The beginning of the weekend was interesting and ensured a great weekend.

Our devised performance.

 Next day we had a little warm up all the important workshops started. That day I took part in workshop led by Mr.Ulrich Gottlieb(who was one of the main organizer’s of the weekend) which was called “Physical Theatre”. I liked that workshop, because I understood that voice and sound aren’t the only way to express ourselves. We can express our feelings, mood and thought with our physical body, in another words: using the physical theater.

  Than I had a workshop with Ms. Jill Thomas which was called “The dance of Diversity”. I greatly enjoyed it, because I like dancing very much. The aim of this workshop was to develop our movement and dance skills. Ms. Thomas taught us some basic moves from hip hop. That was a really successful and useful workshop, because after that  I was sweating and feeling our muscles.

My assembly group.

 The other day I started with a workshop “Can you feel the Force”. That workshop was led by Mr.Miller. It aimed to richen our imagination, so we could improvise on the stage. Mr. Thomas gave each of us a situation and we had to act it out, without really having time to prepare. That workshop was really interesting, as I learned the key techniques of improvisation.

  On the third day all the students were divided into four assembly groups. Each of those groups had to use the skills and techniques gained from the weekend to make a small performance piece. There was a real working atmosphere during our assembly sessions. I was highly contributing to all discussions and was a lot of ideas for making a great performance.

  Our closing performance was interesting and different from others. It was about the real world: war, peace, victims…we visualized two groups of enemies who were having a fight, an also a group of peace-makers, who were trying to do everything to maintain peace…but even though they tried hard, they couldn’t make total peace. The war was stopped…but just stopped, not finished…like in a real world.

  

The final.

What did I achieve?

I really think that ReIsta was a great success, and I thoroughly enjoyed that weekend.  I was satisfied as I could reach the aims that I set in the beginning: I deepen my skills and understandings of theatre; I learnt how to use my body to express my emotions and feelings. Besides gaining a lot of new skills I met many different people and made many good friends. I hope every single student enjoyed that weekend like I did, and will always have great friends and memories from ReIsta.