UniMAP offered my English Theatre Arts co-curricular class once again this semester. This would be my third time teaching this class in which the number of participants have risen from just under 40 to 50 students. Like the previous class two semester ago, I started by giving the class an Introduction to Theatre Arts lecture to get them in the right frame of mind. Then we went right to it: The 50 split into 5 groups and each group had to come up with a short play in an hour. This was only for our first session. Ultimately the students performed their play at the amphitheatre in the Lecture Hall Complex. There were five plays in all, where three were adaptations of classics and two were original works. There were two adaptations of Cinderella, while The Tortoise and the Hare got only one. The first original work was a comedic […]

Narrator: Previously, on Hishgraphics blog… After seven weeks, on and off my co-curricular class has come to an end. We ended the class by running a stage play presentation just like the last time I ran this class. At first, the students limbered up, rehearsed their lines and planned their staging while still trying to wake up at 8am. Everyone warmed up fast. Two groups had to rehearse their staging more than the third group as they had requested permission to set up their props, backdrops and rehearse the previous night. The secondary stage has a bad spot where many a student slipped and fell. But the student above was on the platform because the script called for it. Wait till you see the results of the third group’s make-up work further down this article. Gear and Shaft presents Rumpelstiltskin The troupe that named itself Gear and Shaft started the […]

After two semesters absent, English Theatre Arts has been offered as a UniMAP co-curricular course once again. Like before, I am the course teacher. But unlike before, instead of less than 15 students I now have to handle 40 students. I returned to my course notes to adapt it for many. Thankfully, the students are very proactive and hands on with the course. Three groups of theatre troupes were formed. Each group will be organise a proper theatre performance at the end of the course, like the last time I taught this course. This includes writing their own play. For the first week, I took the trainees to task. And they performed magnificently in their own groups. Each troupe were able to quickly produce plays with various levels of amusement, comedy and pathos. (Someone was stabbed!) There was a problem with the air-conditioning system our hall, so we all relocated […]

Narrator: Previously on Hishgraphics Blog… Yesterday, my theatre arts students completed their course. In conjunction with the final session, the students and I organised the inaugural Performance Day for the course. We began at 2pm. Ain brought snacks and kuih for the students. Irfan was our videographer, using the department’s camera. The students had prepared for two plays to be performed for the event. The first was “The Midnight Class” where a pair of students find themselves in a replacement Mandarin language class late at night. However, they soon realise that they are the only two students in the class who are… not dead. “The Midnight Class” had a total of 10 speaking roles. The roles were based on the character building exercise we had over the duration of the course. Some lines made the audience chuckle, especially the punchline to the “Why do they call you Jenny?” line. Even […]

Did I not join this university as a language translator? How did I end up teaching English Theatre Arts as a co-curricular course? It really matters not, because I am enjoying my role as an language educator here. More so because I love teaching enhancement of soft skills. So my course began this week. We began with the obligatori Negaraku anthem song. I tried getting the students to read part of the Aliens script – slightly modified – to get them to emote (with and without stage direction). I dealt them this random lines exercise between two students to get them to emote better, but during the first week even “sadness” elicited an unstoppable wave of giggles. During the second week I got the students to read the script that I wrote for students involved in another programme. Perhaps I need to write a blog post about that programme soon. […]