On December 4 to December 6, the first online ISTA conference was held where we got to attend it with our DP1 theater class. This was my first ISTA experience and I have acquired a lot of new skills and amazing memories. Even though we were not able to travel and be with other kids from other schools, as a class we got together at some of our classmates houses so that we can firm groups and not have to act/perform over zoom. 

Over the course of the 3 days we had sessions with the ISTA artist Mr. Joachim Matschoss, and our drama teacher Ms. Jackson, we also had blocks where we had to work as a group and complete tasks, presentations and create performances. 

LO 1) Strength & Growth 

LO 2) Challenge & Skills

LO 4) Commitment & Perseverance

LO 5) Collaborative Skills 

LO 1) In the course of these three days I have learned and strengthened/improved a lot of skills about different things, such as acting, puppetry, theater elements, Japanese Bunraku puppetry, Brecht theater, and naturalist/minimalist theater, solo pieces, voice, movement, and the creative process, frozen tableaus and body language. Even though I have learned a great amount of information on these topics one thing that I have definitely improved and will be using in my theater class is my improved acting. Mr. Joachim kept telling me to be more relaxed and go with the flow while still incorporating emotion to my acting. Which made me realize I think too much while acting and instead the actions, expression, tone etc should come naturally. I realized, as I was creating pieces, my acting became better each time, as my actions came more naturally, I stopped paying attention to my surroundings and did not stress the performance as much. Also with the yoga/exploring the space activity I really started being aware of the space I have and how it could be decorated and potentially make plays better. Using the space available and acting more naturally, I improved my acting skills immensely. 

LO 2) I have developed new skills on the topics Japanese Bunraku puppetry, Brecht theater, and naturalist/minimalist theatre as they were the main focuses of the three days. Each day we explored one of the topics in great detail. In Japanese Bunraku puppetry we learned about the cultural context and how it has developed over the years. We later on made our own puppets and created a puppetry piece with them. This is where we faced a challenge, as Mr. Joachim had very specific requests about the setting, which we had to improvise a lot. For me and my group he said to have a very dark setting which was hard as the room kept getting sunlight through the curtains so we had to put blankets over us and the laptop to create a dark setting.  The second day was the day I faced the most challenges was I had two summatives due that day and I was doing ISTA, so to be able to manage both I used my problem solving and time management skills to do my school tasks during the ISTA breaks and then do ISTA during the designated time. This way I was able to balance out both of them. The last day I did not face any big challenges, however we had to repeat our performances many times before coming to a final conclusion which was quite physically demanding and tiering. Because  Mr. Joachim kept giving us feedback and told us to further develop it, which is one of the biggest skills/takeaways I got from the last day , “never ever be satisfied by your first idea”. Even though repeating the same play over and over many times was tiring and time consuming, it really helped develop our pieces better. We had one performance where it was the whole class, and we had to say our lines super loudly (since we were recreating a chaotic scene) and repeating it many times hurt my throat which was one of three biggest challenges. 

LO 4) I showed commitment and perseverance during the ISTA conferences, as I attended every single zoom meeting, completed the tasks given to us and was present for all the days. Even though I had many summatives and other things I had to do outside of ISTA I was still very consistent with my attendance and work ethic. Some of the activities that we did involve a massive amount of concentration as well as being both  mentally and physically demanding, so me and my classmates had to stay focused and persevere through the ISTA activities  despite being very tired.

Even though it was a very long and demanding weekend, it was a fun experience and very informal. It taught me many new skills that I will be using in my theater class and in the future. 

LO 5) During the ISTA weekend me and all my classmates met up in different peoples’ houses each day to attend the conferences together. Since theater is all about collaboration and fusion of ideas. Depending on the day and the activity we had to work in pairs, small groups, or as a whole class, which was fun and definitely came up with great ideas and final pieces. If we were to all do ISTA individually over zoom, I do not think our work ethic or the quality of our work would have been this good. Working collaboratively worked great as we were all able to pitch in ideas and bring our individual qualities together to create a variety of things, such as frozen tableau, performances, creating puppets, puppetry pieces. It was also a great opportunity for us to get to know our drama class better, as we have not met in real life before due to Covid-19 lockdown, doing the ISTA conferences together helped us create bond, friendships, trust and sense of comfortableness, which will all help us work better with each other further down the DP theater course journey .