Here’s the story behind these photos.

Just this morning, I logged in to my Facebook account and I had a notification about a memory from 2017, and it has been three (3) years since this fun happened. Time really flies so fast.

Selected students and teachers from different Diocesan Private Schools were chosen to join this workshop that was held at the Senior High School campus of Pax Catholic Academy in May 2017. This workshop was good for a week. We were not allowed to go home, so everyone stayed in school for this activity. Each one of us was so excited with this workshop, and it was quite fun.

Our trainer was Mr. Dan S. Pahila, he is a secondary teacher at Ilo-Ilo National High School, Ilo-Ilo City, Philippines. He is teaching MAPEH and Drama Arts. On the other hand, students’ trainer was Ms. Lyrvie Shyn R. Soltones. She is also a secondary teacher in the same school and also teaching in Drama Arts. Teachers used the vacant room on the ground floor, while students together with Ms. Soltones were on the 2nd floor in a merged room of the senior high school. Mr. Pahila made us ready for the acting workshop on the first day. We had to warm up, and it was funny memorable. We got inevitable bloopers and funny faces, since we need to exercise our face muscles as well. We had to dance and stretched every inch of our muscles before we start acting, inorder to avoid some muscle sprains. Drama/acting is not as easy as you think it is, it’s more complicated than dancing. Why? It involves not just your body movements, facial expressions but even your emotions and tone of voice to make the drama more realistic and move the audience through this. Not all dancing activities require facial expressions or overt emotions unlike acting.

To be an effective actor one must put himself on the shoes of the character. You need to own the personality, behavior, emotion and one must set aside his ownself inorder to absorb the character he needs to portray. Another important aspect to act out your character is, an innate talent in acting. Some people are having difficulties in acting, no matter how hard they try, despite the fact that they love it. The audiences/viewers will feel so awkward watching the actor who is forcing himself to play his role. One must possessed a natural talent in acting, though it can be learned, it’s quite better when it is not obtrusive.

In theater show the characters must know proper blockings and that is with the help of the director and stage manager. Blocking plays a crucial part in theater’s success. Characters must know how and where to stand on stage. They must stand facing their audience most of the time or at least in slant position. This is to let the audience see their facial expressions on the show, and it also helps the actors avoid collisions during the play. Characters must have modulated voice inorder for the audience to hear their words, except if the theater’s show is a Pantomime (a performance using gestures and body movements without words). Good lightings (stage lighting) are needed too, these light effects help arouse emotions, and also to indicate the night and day. Blue light set a sad and cold atmosphere, while bright colors for happiness, red is for war/fight and dark/dim light is to indicate death/tragedy. Spotlight is the most well-known of the theater light, its use is to focus or highlight the actor or element on stage. These are the knowledge imparted to us by Mr. Pahila.

We had a great week in this workshop. The following days were so awesome because we were learning something new, even it was exhausting and besides it was my thing. Since I was in high school I really love acting even when I got in college. The best part of my acting career (make believe) was back in high school, especially in our Filipino subject. I used to be the leader of the group, director and the protagonist (leading character) of our little role play. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to join any contest like an impersonation or declamation due to poverty back in my days. Joining such event/contest must have financial support for the costume and sometimes for trainer’s fee, and my foster parents told me that they couldn’t afford it.

During the workshop, we learned how to shift our emotions from being happy, then became suddenly sad, crazy, shifted to being angry (we were shouting) back to being happy. I thought that we were like crazy people doing that thing, we were murmuring things while going to every corner of the room. I will never forget that we had to pick a partner and confess our painful past and our regrets in this life. This activity helped us freed ourselves from misery, and also to know our fellow actors from deep inside. It is easier to work with the people you know by heart. We also learned how to put ourselves on someone elses shoe, feel their pain and offer great compassion to these people. At the end of our workshop we must exhibit the product of what we learned. We had four theater plays two of these came from the teachers entitled “Tokhang” and “Ai Ai” (Comedy Skit, the only word spoken here is just ai ai).

Here’s the Product of our Theater Workshop. The video was recorded by one of our students using my own mobile phone.

You may watch the video on YouTube by clicking the link below: