一個月的轉變與感激

2019六月-紅坊之聲
by Keeper of the Faith

Above: Highlights from the June STW. View the full album here.

June 2019 was a month of big changes at the Red Room. At the June Stage Time & Wine, friends gathered to bid a fond farewell to Manav, fondly known as Reeves, and Yueh-an, otherwise known as the Scribe. They have both been the backbone of all Red Room’s activities and programs for the last few years. There are no words that can do justice to the love and gratitude we feel for these two very special people. You will be missed.

We wish you both the very best on your new adventures, and look forward to seeing you again.

From your Red Room family

Tai Mesches at Stage Time & Wine

At the Red Room, we are fortunate to have amazing people join us from time to time. Thank you Tai Mesches for your work as interim coordinator. It means so much to us. You are an important addition to our Red Room Family, providing invaluable assistance at an important time in our growth. Many of you know Tai as the poet who loves to rhyme at Stage Time and Wine. This month, it is his skills as a cross cultural trainer that have been helping the Red Room team through this transition period.

Congratulations to Red Room intern Peirong Li. You have been a pleasure to work with for the last three months. Your work was important to our Red Room family. Thank you for your contribution to the Red Room and we wish you success.

And last, but not least, we are grateful to Mary Bee for her insane dedication to improving the Red Room venue. We all noticed that you have been a busy bee for the last few weeks, hanging umbrellas, moving furniture, organising documents, and adding a little touch of love to the venue for all of us to enjoy. Thank you so much!

From left to right: Tina, Roma, Peirong, Cristina, Mary Bee. Behind us all, Reeves.

Stage Time & Juice

by Carol Yao

In an attempt to fuse exercise with culture, Stage Time and Juice has introduced a series called Let’s Dance: Africa! The two instructors, Ghanniy Oyedele, and Lincy Lincet hail from Nigeria and Kenya. Lincy is a professional dancer. Ghanniy is a dancer, science teacher, and comedian, and is one of the latest additions to our Stage Time and Juice volunteer team.

African dancing was traditionally done freestyle, but recently has become a choreographed dance. Its rhythms have also made their way into popular music which means many of the tunes that Ghanniy and Lincy pick for the class might also be familiar.

Please come and join us!

If you have something you would like to share as a featured guest, please do not hesitate to contact us at juice.redroom@gmail.com.

Body and Soul

Anne Dewees, Wellness Programs Coordinator

How do meditation, breathing and singing bowls affect us ?

Singing Bowl Meditation with Anne Dewees

You may have noticed that the Red Room regularly hosts events related to meditation, conscious breathing and sound healing. Why do we do all those things, and why do we label them under “wellness” ? To meditate means to concentrate on one point, to pay attention. One can pay attention to many things, and in fact to anything – a sound, the breath, a candle, but also a golf ball or dishes being cleaned. Whatever object you chose, it will help you focus on the present moment and what is happening right now in your life. You will soon notice things you usually never take the time to see or to feel – the slight movement of a flame, the quality of a sound, the subtlety of a smell. We generally say meditation helps to calm the mind, to distress, to develop a better capacity to concentrate, which is absolutely true, as we become better and better at focusing on the thing of our choice with the practice. We get less disturbed in our life, we develop a capacity to define more clearly what is important and what is not, what is worth worrying about or not. But also, meditation simply helps (is that so simple ?) to see life better, to feel it in a more profound and accurate way. Most of the time, it brings a lot of joy and thankfulness just to consider the magic of breath, the magic of being a sentient living being.

Meditating on the breath and on sound brings even more to this : since breath is a source of energy for our body, deepening it, calming it and even orientating it can literally transform our energy, making it both quieter and stronger.
As for sound meditation, our cells have their own frequency and vibration, and they are affected by the vibrations of everything around. Metal singing bowls vibrate with frequencies close the ones of a meditative brain, and produce beautiful harmonies. Hence, when we expose our body to those very specific frequencies, they soak them in and align with them. This is why a bath of singing bowls induces such a meditative state, more refreshing than actual sleep.

For all those reasons, we believe that meditation, deep breathing and sound healing do help us to live our lives in a more conscious, connected way – connected to ourselves and to everything and everyone around. They do make us feel better, just feel “well”.

FIG

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Empress:

Formosa Improv Group formed Summer of 2018 in MRT stations and has blossomed to having a multilingual troupe that has dabbled in long, short and musical forms of improv. June featured our first Monoscene show, led by core performers Andrei Veja and Olof Nordenstom. Below are their impressions of the show and improv in Taipei.

Our July main stage show at the Red Room brings us back to the basics of improv (think: Whose Line Is It Anyway?). Join us July 27, 2019 for Getting FIGgy wit it! Doors open at 7:30pm.

Save the date for FIG’s first anniversary show, to be held at the Social Innovation Lab on August 17, 2019 (doors open at 7pm). FIGs first Level 2 graduates will open for our anniversary show and we will be featuring fellow improv friends from Skits and Giggles (all the way from Taichung).

FIG’s August main stage show at the Red Room will be held on August 24, 2019 (doors open at 7:30pm).

Thank you for your support! Yes, and…”

Andrei Veja:

When I first began practicing improv with the group that was to become FIG, I never even considered the thought of ever performing onstage. I was already having so much fun being able to create scenes together and bond with this group of people. Some regulars and newcomers, some very experienced and some who were trying improv for the first time. But among the faces that would show up the most often, what everyone had in common was a passion for improv, a desire to challenge oneself, and a fun and playful personality.

Fast forward to August 2018, after FIG had already been formed and named, and there was already talk of performing our first show. Naturally, I was nervous and felt unprepared, but if there was one thing that I had learned from improv, it was that an improviser will never be more prepared than when they’re present in the moment they’re on stage. To this day, as soon as I step out on stage in a performance, regardless of how I was feeling before that, all fear and uncertainty dissolve. And this is why I love doing improv and being part of FIG so much. I’ve learned so much about myself, become more confident, more flexible, more positive and accepting, and have learned to appreciate the art of improv on an entirely different level; and, most importantly, I’ve been able to share this journey with the trusting family we call FIG.

I used to think one had to come up with creative ideas in improv in order to make a scene entertaining, but I realized that there are no real ideas in improv, only inspiration and discovery. This was the idea behind the FIG’s show in June. We wanted FIG to slow things down this time and thus allow ourselves to explore our characters and relationships on a deeper level. We felt like the best format to do this was the monoscene, in which one location remains constant throughout the entire scene, in which there are no cuts or flashbacks, and which can last anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. As soon as the performers receive a suggestion from the audience for a location (which, for each respective story in our show, were given as: a train station in Chernobyl, a pool, and a gay club), they have to immediately decide on how the space would look, given only chairs and their imaginations to allow the audience to see the space as if it were real. Then, they have mere seconds to imagine what kind of characters would exist in this space and to decide whether they will be onstage or offstage when the lights go up and the scene begins.

Over the next 20-30 minutes, the improvisers continue to be inspired by the space and by each other, and slowly discover the deeper motivations behind their characters’ decisions and their relationships with other characters. At the same time, improvisers are given the freedom to exit and enter the scene as they see fit. By the end, the story may have taken several twists and turns, with truths and surprises revealed that are as entertaining for the improvisers as they are for the audience.

We certainly had fun practicing monoscenes played out in a variety of locations throughout the entire month of June, and have learned valuable skills about the power of discovery in improv. The decision to take on the challenge of performing a monoscene was made after several of our members attended a workshop taught by improv guru Jonathan Pitts during our trip to the Manila Improv Festival earlier this year in March. We immediately realized that this was what FIG needed. Of course, as we continue to grow and learn, we will refine our improv skills by exploring a variety of formats, but I am thankful for having been able to discover more about ourselves as a group through the monoscene, and are always eternally grateful to Red Room for providing the perfect space to share this experience with the audience.

Olof
I concur with all of Andrei’s reflections, and not only because the first rule of improv is to say yes. It’s been a pleasure to work with Andrei to develop our monoscene skills. Improv is at its best when not only the audience is surprised but also the actors themselves. By slowing down the pace and removing the typical tricks that improvisers often fall back on, the monoscene format creates the perfect conditions for such surprises. I’m amazed at how quickly FIG has developed a group mind and listening skills that allow us to jointly discover fascinating and unexpected stories. More to come.

Andrei Veja is a linguist, avid language learner, and language-learning coach who has discovered his passion for improv over the past year as a member of FIG.
Olof is a software developer and Chinese language enthusiast who first joined the improv community in Beijing in 2009.