True Heart Performance & Rehearsal Documentation
True Heart Playback Theatre:
真心劇團
The Documentary
The experience, the memory, the dream.
Recorded by Cynthia Chui, Just a participant, a documenter.
The first Playback theatre workshop: Open to all, 12 February 2006
The time has finally come. The first taste of the well-known Playback theatre, the first workshop was being held on one lovely Sunday afternoon, in the Camden Chinese Community Centre (CCCC), to be more precise; about 15-20 people gathered in the dining room. The room was usually packed with Chinese elderly during weekdays but today was rather different and yet unique. People from different background, different age groups and different countries all gathered around to exchange and share what they have got to take part in the first Playback theatre workshop. Some people are already on Playback theatre training and the rest of the groups were just ordinary people who was interested in drama, interested in new things and wanted to give it a try. Everyone turned up with a certain degree of expectations.
Veronica Needa, group leader of the Playback theatre group, kicked off the session by introducing a few interesting warm-up games or exercises. Everyone in the room introduced themselves by doing a ‘movement’ which they thought could match with their own names; the funnier, the sillier, the more exaggerated the better; then the rest of the group would copy the person who introduced himself/herself. Afterwards, we played another ‘getting-to-know-each other’ games, during which each of us
Playback theatre workshop: Session 3, 19 March 2006
Warm-up exercises
This was already the third session of the Playback theatre workshop. People have kept coming back to the workshop and new friends came to join. To start off with the session, we played a few warm-up exercises. We all formed a circle in the room and each of us spoke loud and clearly of our names to everyone. We also used a ball to throw to a person if anyone was not sure of the name of a particular person. Then we splitted into groups and worked out 3 common things which possessed by all the group members, be it a habit, something they all enjoy doing or an experience they all have shared. Each of the group then performed those 3 common things by means of movements, or it could be a short play. For example some groups found out that all the group members’ crown go round in the same direction, some groups did a flying movement which produced a 3-D visual effect, it represented that they all had been on the flight. Another group performed a little play including travelling on the flight and took pictures in front of some tourists’ attractions, and this represented that this group enjoyed travelling.
After this exercise, we all formed a big circle again. Veronica then suggested a ‘playmate’ game! When she pointed randomly to one particular person within this circle, the two persons next to this person who was being pointed; automatically formed as a group and had to do some movements including: being a rabbit, a donkey, a helicopter, a palm tree and James Bond.
The last exercise was that, we group into different groups; each group come up with a machine example that they would like to see another group to work it out. We all ‘made’ the following machines: Environmentally-friendly mooncake machine, thinking machine, bubbles-making machine, itching-releasing machine and a ticklish machine. Each machine was given a ‘quality’, e.g. an ordinary itching-releasing machine was added an ‘angry quality’, so this machine became ‘aggressive’.
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Playback theatre: story-telling
(Since most of the playback theatre team members were absent, this time, participants could give it a try to perform)
This time we had many first time comers so they were all encouraged to express the feeling of taking part in this workshop, or just a feeling they possessed at that very moment.
Participant A expressed that this place was a ‘stress-free’ place, she enjoyed all the activities being played earlier on and was glad to know many new friends.
Participant B had a lot of fun and felt very welcoming, despite this was the first time she attended this workshop. She also felt like everything was very new to her.
Past experiences and feelings sharing
Sharing 1
She shared her feeling she still remembered when she had a car-crash accident in 1996. Someone dangerously drove his care into the petrol station where her car was parked there. She felt like as if she had gone to the valley of death and as if she was almost died. She screamed right at that moment.
Sharing 2
He recalled his feeling when he was struggling to get out of bed one day during last week. He only slept for 3 hours, and struggled to wake up but in the end he did get up because he had to go to lectures. He felt like at that moment, he had 2 voices in his mind, whether to go to lectures; and he could stay in bed.
Sharing 3
She shared her feeling that she had in the past week. In the past two months she had been looking for jobs but none had been a success. For some strange reason, she was being asked constantly for a week whether she had got a job yet and she was feeling so frustrated, stress; especially when someone said to her, ‘if you wouldn’t look for a job harder then you would probably stay in where you were working now for another 10 years.’ This ’10 years’ word to her, felt like a big ’10 years’ word written on a piece of paper and shown right in front of her mind. She only wanted someone whom could be beside her, to listen to her cry without saying a word. She needed support, but she felt extremely frustrated and stress.
Sharing 4
At that moment when we were in the workshop, he had this feeling, this very strong feeling: sad, soft and beautiful feeling. It was an indescribable love feeling. He couldn’t find words to explain. It was wordless, sweet and sad.
Sharing 5
He recalled the very first time when he worked in the UK, when he was first here. He was at his uncle place and was being taken care of him. After the first week of his first time working in the UK, his uncle gave him £10. He recalled, the manner when his uncle gave £10 to him and said to him, this £10 I was giving you was not your wage, it was for you to buy something you like. He was the foreman in a big company when he was in Hong Kong and felt like his self-esteem had all gone at that moment. He wanted to fly back to Hong Kong straight away. He questioned himself if he was useless, that he’s worked for a week, he worked so hard but his uncle told him that he was not worth being given a ‘wage’. He felt so miserable and because of this, he was more motivated to work harder, to learn English until now.
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Playback theatre workshop: Session 4, 30 March 2006
Sharing 1
She is a first time participant in the playback theatre. She expressed that she had a tiring day at work all day, it had been very stressful. She had been so busy at work, running around all day.
Sharing 2
We had a wonderful and exciting story being told by one of our participant. An incident happened to her last Thursday, something bad according to her. She went on to a bus as usual, but a ‘psycho’ was on the same bus as she was. This bus was full, the man had a reddish face, around 30 years of age, he was falling asleep on his seat and leaning over very closely to the woman sitting right next to her, as if she was his wife. She asked that man why he sat like that and yelled at him. She didn’t know how to control her emotions because she saw something which she thought was too much to bear and finally she slapped him. She felt very good after hitting him but he slapped her back! Someone sitting at the back of them, stood up and stopped them. Another black woman sitting in front of them, turned round and yelled at the man of why he hit the woman. She wanted to call the police but she didn’t eventually, this was because she had something to do later on and that she didn’t want to affect the rest of the passengers on the bus. However, she felt like what happened was really unfair to her. She said that if there was enough time, she would have done something to that man.
Sharing 3
When being asked about ‘how was your day?’, it has become such a common question, for one to show concerns and cares over another person. However, for some people, life is just like a routine, everyday is the same and this particular participant, when being asked ‘how was your day?’; he had nothing to share. However, he said that he had a dream the previous night he fell from a plane, he was falling down and when he looked down from where he was, there was a lake on the ground. While he was falling down, he felt so scared but he was enjoying the view.
Sharing 4
She felt so tired and stressed. She said that in these few weeks n particular, she has got many essays and coursework to finish and she has had many sleepless nights. She said that if she could sleep better then it would be fine otherwise, it was like how she was feeling right now, very exhausted.
Sharing 5
We are all ‘people of the global village’, people nowadays always come and leave a country for another one. She just arrived from Hong Kong this morning, she came back this time because she used to study in London for 2 years, now that she came back to pack her stuff and send it all back to Hong Kong. After she left London about half a year ago, she went back to Hong Kong and had been job-hunting, finally she has found a job which would begin in April. She came back to visit friends and this time when she was here, she had a strong feeling and thinking about whether to stay or go. This was a mixed feeling, London: a place she loved so much and had many memories in here. Hong Kong: her home, all of her families are there. Now that she has got a job which made it a more obvious reason for her to go back and stay.
Sharing 6
When it was your friend’s birthday, you often wanted to do something special for him/her. When your friend was coming over to visit you from a long distance, you would especially want to do something exciting and wonderful for her.
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It was Yan’s birthday on 30 March. The story began from the evening on 29 March. Long time ago, Yan told Penny that she wanted to find somewhere to stay during these few days, provided that Yan has got an itinerary of this trip and was destined to arrive at Victoria Station at 1am. Penny thought that it would be dangerous for Yan if she travelled on her own from Victoria station after she has arrived back to Penny’s place; therefore she decided to book a B&B room near Victoria station. She then checked in earlier and also bought two little cakes for Yan in preparation. Penny waited in the room and fell asleep on a double-decked bed, she suddenly woke up at 2am, got a call from Yan and she told Penny that she was stuck in Nottingham!! Penny said that Yan said something weird and that she said she was stuck on a plane and it was not able to land so it circled in the air for 3 hours, and finally when the plane landed, she ended in Nottingham, and she said that her luggage was being opened. Penny worried about her safety and if she was able to arrive. After the call she couldn’t sleep and it was the longest night she ever had. Penny checked in a hotel near Victoria, wanting to see Yan to celebrate her birthday but now Yan was in Nottingham and it was already so late at night. Finally and luckily, at 9am the following morning, Yan arrived at Victoria station and Penny has already checked out and waited for her at the station!! When they finally saw each other, both of the girls were so relieved!!! Penny said ‘Happy birthday to Yan!!!
Closed Workshop 1 , 23 April 2006
This was the first closed session of our playback theatre workshop. Things are starting to get serious. Participants will begin to be trained and practised on a monthly basis. We all appreciate the opportunities that we have, being part of the first Chinese Playback theatre Group. We all feel that this is such a culturally diversed group and we happen to be here, to share our own experiences with each other, to express our feelings through performances; despite the differences of characters of each of us.
Sharing 1
Work Routine can be so boring. For her, everyday seems to be pretty much similar, it is work, then work, and followed by work. This was her new job that she has only started for less than a month or so but it has already become so busy.
Sharing 2
For some people, alcohol is a pleasurable thing. It is for celebration, as a drink during dinner but for some, alcohol is an ‘experience’, a bad memory. Once she started drinking, she would lose her control and became so very drunk that she would do something which might be dangerous to her life. She would cross the road without paying attention to the traffic. This time she was drunk for 2 days consecutively. When her consciousness was back, she then felt the physical signal that her body was giving her; she started to feel very sick, threw up and all that. She felt like, ‘that’s it!’ I should control myself and cut down on alcohol because alcohol is something that she enjoys not something that would become detrimental to her health.
Sharing 3
She was a student, a hard-working student. University’s work was really intensive but yet enjoyable. Last weekend, it had been such an intensive one. During then, because of the nature of the course, it required them to go into a very deep state of their emotions so to: re-think, regenerate their minds. All of these made her so exhausted afterwards.
Sharing 4
Everyone seems to have something that they are afraid of, some people are scared of darkness, some scared of the scratchy sound; some scared of rats or those sorts of similar tiny creatures. Her kids love animals, and they happened to have bought a hamster. This little hamster enjoyed staying at the fireplace in their house. Since she was so scared of rats or mouse (this was because when she was a kid herself, a mouse bit the back of her ear); this tiny white hamster seemed to have become a threat to her. As the hamster always stayed so close to the fireplace, the hamster was often covered in black ash. Every time when she saw this originally-white-color-hamster-turned-to-dark, the ‘feeling of being a mother’ ïÍৠinside her was so strong and she decided to take the hamster to have a wash. While she was giving a wash to this little hamster, she realized that animal and human beings could actually communicate, ever since then the hamster would come up to her bed and tried to get closer to her.
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Closed Workshop 2, 11 May 2006
On 8 June 2006, the True Heart Playback Group will be giving its first professional performance; therefore during this workshop and the following one, the team who is going to perform will be concentrating on the training part.
Sharing 1
Friends, we all have friends;
Special Episode of Playback session, 16 July 2006
On 16 July 2006, Sunday; True Heart Playback theatre group was proud to give its second official performance in the Charing Cross Library, as part of the Chinese Oral History Exhibition.
The performance was only for a very short 20minutes of time, with four of our artists (Veronica, Jing, Wing-Hong and Davina) involved in the performance. The audience came from a very diversed cultural background, from a wide range of ages and it was rather interesting!
The performance began with each of our artists gave a very short introduction of themselves in the form of playback. We then encouraged and invited our lovely bunch of audiences to join and tell us about their little stories. We were lucky enough to have three people from the audience to share with us, despite the short duration of time of performance given.
A young man called Jonathan talked about how much he has enjoyed the performance and was happy to see so many culturally different people attended the event. It was great to see we, as Chinese people in the U.K. were starting to become the ‘less-silent’ bunch of people and becoming more able to tell the public how we are actually doing as ‘foreigner’ in this piece of ‘foreign land’. He also pointed out that he felt the UK public would benefit more if the local broadcast organisations would attend the event to publicise the beauty of this event.
We then had a lovely Scottish gentleman, who spoke perfect mandarin and told us how much he loved this exhibition and the performance itself. He was delighted and proud of having a lovely wife, who’s one of the event organiser for this event; and they are expecting their first child. A future full of hopes and he found how lovely it is to be living in London.
We finished the performance by having our final audience shared with us a very powerful real-life story of her own. This was a story when this girl was not even one year old. She and her family were in Vietnam at that time and they wanted to escape to Hong Kong. It was a decision made by her father, a strong man who had the responsibility for the whole family, they all escaped to Hong Kong just by getting on a boat. On the boat, there was not only her family, they were with so many other people who all wanted to go to the same place – Hong Kong. While the boat was getting quite near to the Hong Kong harbour, in her eyes she could only see there were even more boats surrounding their boats. All of the boats were in fact competing with each other to get into the land of Hong Kong. Her dad thought if their boat was to queue up like the other boats, there would not be any chance of them being able to reach the land; so her father made a very risky decision (could not even imagine what the consequences would be), and it was to make a huge hole on the boat and made the boat sink. They did not know what to expect but only to believe in the fact that while the boat was sinking, this would catch the attention of the police officers in Hong Kong and they could be rescued. Luckily, as they have hoped for; they were being rescued amongst the many other boats in the sea. Until then, she and other people on the boat still kept in touch with each others despite everyone lives in all over the world now.
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