In DP1 I was presented with the opportunity of joining the ISTA TaPS trip. This is an immersive high school theatre symposium which offers training workshops over the course of three days. This is usually a trip taken by IB Theatre students, I, myself am an IB Visual Arts student however, because of my great interest in the art of theatre and with my upcoming theatrical feat my parents and I both thought it would be a great opportunity for me and my high school career.

The event was hosted at Prem Tinsulanonda International School which is a boarding school located close to the northern city of Chiang Mai in Thailand. We had a total of five workshops which were to be done in our assigned ensembles, each ensemble had a mix of students from the 7 schools which were included in the event.

 

Workshops:

Session #1: Performing Theatre Theory

• Here we mainly learnt how to use powerful stills which have substantial meanings. This form of image theatre was particularly interesting as we got to dabble in presenting social issues.

Session #2: Exploring World Theatre Traditions

• In this session, we learnt to perform the traditional Thai masked drama of Khon. I found this to be the most engaging session as I got to wear costumes and perform as one of the famed Kohn characters: monkeys

Session #3: IB Diploma Perspectives

• I myself do not take theatre therefore, I was going into this session thinking that the takeaways wouldn’t hold much value to my Group 6 studies however, coming out of it I was amazed by all the new information I learnt from an IB professional. Most of the skills I learnt were transferable to my studies and visual arts and I plan on demonstrating this in my upcoming portfolio work.

Session #4: Staging Play Texts

• This session was done with a special performer who specialises in body contortion. The session was quite interesting as I learnt how to manipulate the body to tell stories. Furthermore, I was able to pair this with a script making the group work even more interesting.

Session #5: Collaboratively Creating Original Theatre

• We mainly focused on working on the presentation of our bodies paired with sounds we’re able to make. We used these skills to tell detailed stories. This performance style was most similar to that I’ve done in previous years.

The workshops were very interesting and taught me much about the world of theatre, my love for it has only grown stronger and I’ve learnt a lot of new things which will prove to be useful in my future endeavours.

On the second night, we also got the chance to watch two performances. One was a mixed-media performance detailing the story of an individual who had migrated from Myanmar to Thailand. The second one was about a water monster and the river, it involved audience participation and was very well done incorporating aspects of dramatizing as well as comedy.

One of the evenings we even got the chance to watch the Collaborative Project of students who attended the host school. This is one of the required tasks to fulfil the IB Theatre requirements. The performance was very well done and once again very immersive as the audience got to decide the order of the four-part performance.

On the last day, we also got the chance to meet a lady who had changed career paths so much but always found herself coming back to the theatre. Our discussion with her made us realise the importance theatre holds in our lives given the transferability of the many skills it teaches us.

Learning Outcomes:

• LO1: Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.

• • I recognised my passion for theatre and chose to act upon it by joining this trip. In doing so I benefited greatly from the workshops and the people we worked with and met.

• LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
• LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

• • Working with new people and learning from them was the most exciting part of the experience as I got to hear and understand new and different perspectives to issues. This was particularly useful in the first session where we performed image theatre.