Hands down, the best trip I've ever been on. 4 days of intense fun and theatre left me absolutely shattered when I got home but it was so worth it. I have made soo many amazing friends from all over world who I will never forget, and Im pretty sure I will be seeing a couple of them on Broadway and in movies!

  This was my Ensemble, A for Amazing ;-). My group leader, Avital, was amazing. She poured her time and energy into us, giving us the best possible drama knowledge and techniques in just 3 days. She taught us that less is more, we did a lot of work on eye contact and how eye contact could lift the tension up and create a completely different atmosphere. She showed us that to create a piece, you didn't have to start with a story idea and then make a script ect..., you could create a story from anything. The students in my ensemble were fantastic, everyone was so devoted and everyone gave 110% every day, every activity. This really helped boost my confidence and allowed me to really invest myself in everything.

On the first day, we stood outside the Dominion Theatre at 9oclock, and i was terrified. There was about 3-4 schools stood outside as well (as we'd come early) and they were massive! Each group had around 20 kids in their Theatre classes, and we are small school in the South of France with only 4 kids. When we received our packs with where and who were going to be with, I was relieved to see that there were a couple students who didn't know anyone else in the group. I was in Pineapple Dance Studios, naturally Chloe and I freaked out about this ;-). I felt very comfortable with some girls already as we chatted on the 10min walk to the studio, and there, the games began.

To get the know each other we all sat in a circle and we had to make eye contact with someone, walk towards them and whisper each others names. Making eye contact with people I know is already difficult and uncomfortable for me, looking strangers right in the eye and whispering my name, was a whole new level. But this exercise really 'broke the ice' and took away that element of awkwardness and embarrassment. To get us up and moving, we placed chairs around the room with one chair empty, the aim was to try to not let the person sit down on the chair, so there was a lot of team work and sprinting around the room! These activities were a lot of fun and really welcomed me to ISTA and the experience I would be getting. By the end of the morning we had to sit back in the circle and say everyones name, I am terrible with names, so this took me a couple of goes!

We then got started on techniques:

• Energy was used a lot in our work. We spent a long time walking around the room using different energy levels from 1-10 (1 being slow motion, 5 being everyday walking, 10 being running) we also did this with falling down and standing back up. We then had to create a small piece using series of numbers, walking, falling and standing back up. We then added eye contact which made the piece stick together because we started to play off each other, for example, if i held eye contact with someone as I stood up, they would fall down. This shows that eye contact can really pull a piece together and that words do not make the performance.
• Plain White Masks were used on our first day, we had to put the mask on and make eye contact with everyone in the room. A horrifying thought on your first day! Stand up in front of 18 strangers and stare at them, but the mask took away the fear on my face and really made me feel a lot safer and made me relax because i didn't have to think about what my face was doing or if I looked alright. It also created a sense of anonymity, the mask is plain white, it has no gender, you cannot tell what the mask is thinking, what its feeling, it is up to the person wearing it to decide the story of this mask. It really made you focus on your body language, something that a lot of people tend to forget about whilst acting. Using eye contact with body language well, created a very tense atmosphere. 
• Sight Specific was my favourite, we were put into small groups and sent outside to find somewhere and create a piece, this was to help us not create a story first and then look for somewhere but to find something that inspired us. 
• On the last day, we used Puppets, something I used to cringe at. But this was a lot of fun, we choose a piece of music and had to make the puppet do something to the music, we choose the make it dance! It was a tone of fun and not what I was expecting. We did puppet work in, I think, Year 8 and I found it incredibly boring and time consuming. To start with it was difficult to manipulate the puppet smoothly without our arms and bodies tangling to make it look realistic.  But in my group we worked efficiently to make sure it looked clean and natural. We managed to get the puppet moving fluidly and in unison. Picking just one song was also difficult because there was so much too choose from, making a story and picking a song after would have much easier, but that was not the point of TaPS, it is to challenge you, and it sure did! 

Master Classes:
During our 3 days, we did 2 master classes:

1. Frantic Assembly was the highlight of my trip! It was seriously so much fun, when our instructor, Neil, explained what Frantic do, I was dreading it, a lot of lifting and trust falling- My worst nightmare! But it taught me that stepping out of my comfort zone can really help. We started off with some warm up games where we had to look at someone, walk towards them and then suddenly look at someone else and walk to them ect... We then played this bounce game, which the IST student were very impressed with, it was seriously all we talked about for an entire day. We stood in 4 lines of 4 and had to jump in beats of 8,6,4,2,1 (chloe's blog post had a similar video to what we did) he then added claps and words and different movements which reallly confused me but it really got us moving and created a lot of funny memories. We then had to do a series of trust falls that all flowed together, everyone knows my fear of trust falls, but after spending like 45 minutes falling into practically strangers arms, I have the confidents to do it! We also practised different lifts; a lot of falling on the floor in heaps was involved in this;-). We then have to squeeze our partner in 5 places and turn this into a flowing piece with a lift and trust fall AND we had to be in contact at all times. I found this easier because i am a dancer and i like to believe I am gifted with rhythm. By the end of the 2 hours we had created a really beautiful and flowing piece (I wish I had filmed it) I really enjoyed it and I really hope we can bring Frantic back to our class room and use it. I loved the way it was such simple movements but with practise and rhythm it created a really great piece. Would definitely do this again and again.
2. Commedia del Arte, unfortunately, I did not enjoy as much. Ive had past experiences with Commedia in Year 8 and was absolutely traumatised by it, I just found it so silly and embarrassing, I enjoyed watching others preform but just couldn't go up and preform because of how silly I felt. We had to do a lot of emphasising body language and voice and i just felt very clumsy and awkward. A lot of the characters are based on old stereo-types which i did find very interesting, for example Zanni is a worker, a migrant from the south coming up for money. I found the history of Commedia very interesting, but I just couldn't lose myself in it like I did with Frantic. Our Commedia teacher was very funny and really nice, i really wish i could have just let myself go crazy! He was very talented and really funny! My team mates really lifted me up through this, as they could see i was struggling which i am very grateful for.      

Shows:
During our trip we saw 3 very different shows:

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Visually amazing. This performance absolutely blew my mind. There was so much technical stuff that really interested me such as the glass elevator and a lot of bright lights and the set was fabulous- the TV idea was really clever and very unexpected! Everything felt right, it felt like you were in the chocolate factory and you felt apart of it. The over all atmosphere was magical- the part at the end when Willy Wonka disappears had me questioning if magic was possible! I thought the children in the performance were incredibly talented and it really opened my eyes to a career path I would like to pursuit. The puppetry for the Umpalumpas was a really clever idea, in other versions i've seen children play Umpalumpas but this really fitted. The star of the show was Willy Wonka, he was perfect. Willy Wonka in the movie is far too much for me but he was exactly what I pictures he'd be like when i read the book as a child. He was witty and sarcastic but without being obnoxious. I would strongly recommend this performance for teens because you will understand the jokes only meant for adults but at the same time get lost in the magic and be taken back to when we were younger. 
• Electra on the other hand was really not for me. It was exhausting to watch! I found, again, the set really fitting for the play, it was theatre in the round, all one set and only 8 actors no costume changes or interval. The colours, in contrast to Charlie were bleak, dusty and browny colours. The acting was really impressive, the story was just dull... im not really a tragedy person so I was a bit biased walking in but I just do not enjoy an hour of whining and crying and I was slightly confused, the mother had killed the father, but the father had killed the sister? If i were Electra, I would be pretty annoyed if my father sacrificed my sister? But maybe I just didn't understand the plot. Then the step father arrives at the end, ( someone had to explain this to me after) The actor was not good, unfortunately all the tension that had been build leading up to this moment dropped. He had no emotion in his body language or in his voice, when the brother (?) told him he was going to get killed, he simply walked in without a struggle or a word! I just really didn't like it and thought it was so boring but Im glad we saw it because the set and screaming and whining will help for Artaud. 
• Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was my favourite. It was the best show I have ever seen. Frantic Assembly helped choreograph the movements in this show so I was already interested ( I think I see a career for me here!) I'd read the book before and I just couldn't understand how they would make it into a play but, wow, they pulled it off. The movements were so smooth and it looked so effortless, which i know from doing a master class on it takes a lot of effort to carry someone like them! I also really enjoyed the music, it just fitted really well with Christopher's character, very robotic and very outer space. The actor who played Christopher was incredibly talented and you could see he had spent months working with autistic people to get all the ticks and movements correct. It was really impressive and I would defiantly recommended everyone to go see it. 

All in all, I loved every minute of this trip. I really hope we get to go back next year! I would recommend going to everyone! I would like to thank ISTA for the best experience of my life, Mr Fearnehough and Ms Alonso for being such fun and giving up their time to take us to London ( im sure they didnt mind!) and a big thanks to Double Bubble Duchess, Meera-Shakira and Red Tube Harry for the memories we have created on this trip. THANK YOU ALL!!