G8 Drama

After moving from a Korean public school, drama, or theater, came as a totally new concept to me. Taking theater class was one of the most fun things to do in my G8 life. I had a total of 3 performances in Grade 8

1. Monologue: My first performance was presenting a monologue to the audience. We had to think of our identities and what messages we wanted to give the audience. After thinking about it for several classes, I ended up deciding to express the unfairness people get due to particular reasons(like age, race, or gender) and the challenges people face when they move to a new environment. It was hard to write the script all by myself and design how I am going to present my monologue to the audience, such as my gestures, posture, voice, and props. It was very intimidating to perform in such a big audience for the first time, but when I look back, I realize that it was a valuable experience.

2. Dive Week Performance: In middle school, our school had a program that made the students "dive" into several subjects deeply the entire week. For my Dive Week, I chose to do drama. Our group was a combination of 6th and 8th graders. It was a new experience, talking and working with kids about three years younger than me. Although there were times when they fooled around and weren't serious, it was still interesting to listen to new ideas that 8th graders couldn't bring up. We had to choose a problem, write a totally new script, and design the play totally by ourselves. We presented in front of the entire Middle School and the Middle School parents in the main theater. I got really nervous because it was a much bigger crowd compared to my monologue performance. However, when I thought that the audience came here to see us and our performance, I realized that I was actually anticipating the moment and was excited. That was when I got to know that I like performing in front of others.

3. Class Play Performance: This time, we had a written script. The script was about the problems of early marriage. Based on the basic story plot, we had to alter several parts of the play to emphasize the message(such as adding a monologue part for the main character) and design the whole play. Starting from the blocking, costumes, background music, and lighting, even if it was just about designing, it took us a lot of time to plan everything and get perfect. Our class was divided into two groups, but I participated in both of them because one group lacked one person. Sometimes we had to go to school on Saturday to practice(I had to go all the way from Seoul to Songdo, which takes about an hour and a half). It was very surprising to see how focused we can be, and how much we've improved in several hours; we had changed beyond recognition. The feeling that we had achieved our goal as "a team" made me happy, and made me enjoy drama class more.