🛫Sri Lanka 🛫Malaysia 🛬Hanoi → ₫
About a month ago, the long-awaited theatre trip finally started coming together. This was my first ISTA experience, and my classmates who had attended last year had hyped it up so much that the rest of us couldn’t wait. Since this was a theatre trip, I feel it’s only right to introduce the group which included me, Alex, Irina, Jed, and Yethmin from DP2 with Mrs. Jackson and Mr. Lakshita as our incredibly patient supervisors, who did an amazing job handling all of us.
The journey to Hanoi consisted of a 3hr flight to Malaysia followed by another 3hrs to Hanoi. we left on September 25th, meeting at 8 pm after what felt like a long day of school. during check-in, we were waiting to get onto our flight and get a lot of sleep and as we waited to board by the gates, liraya pulled out her tiny digital camera suggesting we make an ISTAvlog which acted as a really good icebreaker, the MC of this vlog was Aadhya & Alex. I think the airports were the biggest icebreakers that contributed to us getting together as a group, it was midnight and we were having icebreakers while Liraya was vlogging all of it in her little digital camera. … by talking about what we were expecting from Ista and the food we would try….
I can say on behalf of all of us that the Malaysian airport was a favorite, we would camp out at Starbucks and split into groups, and the first step would be to exchange currency ($ -> ₫), which made me feel responsible since I was only 18 (Jed had just turned 18) because everyone younger than me had to get my help to exchange their money. After that we would split into pairs and go find places to eat, my first go-to spot was Starbucks, (I love coffee) and I desperately needed to be less cranky and more active as we sat in the airport for 3hrs.
Luckily, Mrs. J booked our tickets so that we arrived a day before ISTA and left a day after the event, giving us plenty of time to explore the city.
DP 5 Day
After landing the next morning, we took some time to rest at our hotel before getting familiar with our main hangout spots for the trip. We had three key locations that we kept moving between so often that we memorized the routes pretty quickly. First, there was our hotel, then the host school, Hanoi International School (HIS), which was just five minutes away, and finally, Lotte Mall, conveniently located right across from the hotel. the hotel had a lot of Korean influence, and pretty much everything in that area, from the mall to the small street shops, had a very Korean vibe.
That evening, we decided to head to the mall for dinner, explore a bit, and do some shopping. We split into two groups—boys and girls. The guys went for Korean BBQ and sat at a separate table, while we girls snagged a private room to continue filming Liraya’s ISTA vlog. Afterward, we wandered through the mall, checking out stores. Since the mall was run by a Korean company, it even had one of those classic photo booths. By the time we found the boys again, Jed was proudly carrying a bucket of crispy chicken. Naturally, we all squeezed into the photobooth and snapped some fun pictures, capturing the chaos of the moment.
About ISTA-TAPS Perspectives
ISTA is the IB Theatre trip that gives students a hands-on, intensive three-day practical theatre experience, along with two live performances. It’s a chance for us to explore theatre concepts beyond what we usually learn in class. This year, the International School Theatre Association (TAPS) was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, which felt fitting because my classmate Irina had studied at UNIS Hanoi, one of the schools helping to organize the event along with the host, Hanoi International School. The event also included a journal with our schedule and guiding focus questions for reflection, which explored the key IB Theatre units through workshops based on the Solo Theatre Project, the Collaborative Project, the Production Proposal, and the Research Presentation. The workshops were run in a rotation, with students shuffled between schools to form five different ensembles.
Day 1
the day began with all the schools assembling in the auditorium, getting our journal with the schedule, and a round of icebreakers. I was placed in Ensemble 4 with Yethmin. the first workshop that Yethmin and I attended was about exploring a theatre tradition specifically the Vietnamese tradition called Hát tuồng. it is often referred to as classical “Vietnamese opera” influenced by Chinese opera because the tradition involves the dialogues being projected through singing and not speaking. In this workshop, we were greeted by 4 performers (2 musicians and 2 actors). the performers told us about the characters of Tuong and showed us how to portray each character. the characters we focused on during our workshop were the old man, the king, the villain, the flirtatious woman, and the fox. they put each member in the ensemble through different roles and explore the tradition through movement and voice. Yethmin and I were the last ones to go and we had to mimic the movements of the performer who was acting as a woman who transformed into a fox, another exercise that we did was changing our laughs; transitioning from a loud laugh to a thin flirtatious one.
the workshops go on for two hours and then there’s a break in between before our next session. after two hours of being isolated from our teachers and the people I knew I got anxious and felt really comfortable after seeing them during lunch, and out of convenience all of us sat together. Alex and Seneka managed to make friends within the first two hours some how and by the end of lunch the rest of us broke out of our shells as well. By the end of the day I knew everyone in my ensemble!