Brazil Part I - Teaching Theatre
November comes, my IT contract ends and it's time to go to Brazil for a break from the weather, which is getting cold every day. That is what make me decide to spend 50 days in Brazil, after almost 7 years living in Montreal.
Yeah, I had been back in this time, but always for short periods, for vacation basically. This time, I wanted to go have a taste again of what it is to live there. Could I go back eventually, to live there again? I was researching the answer for a question that people often ask me. Will I ever go back to live there?
I signed up to volunteer in a orphanage, teaching theatre to the kids. That would give me work to fill my days in São Paulo. Moverover, I was preparing my application for a master's program in performing arts, and I wanted my project to have something to do with my home country. Nothing better than hands-on experience to inspire me to write a good application.
Indeed I was right about getting inspiration: there are so many problems to write about! The actual teaching experience was very enriching, the kids were sweethearts and super-engaged in the activities. However, there was no commitment whatsoever from the direction of the institution, which left me with very few resources to work with. They didn't even divide the class according to age, as I asked them to. I basically had to baby-sit 15 kids from the ages of 4 to 16, at the same time, in the same room.
I wasn't there to baby-sit, so it required quite a bit of improvisation on my part to get the whole thing to work. It's good that improv was one of the things in my program. My class in masks was a great mess, but in the end it turned out ok, with a few students very interested in the craft and making beautiful work.
The saddest thing about the lack of interest from the coordination of the orphanage was that the masks we made were left out in the rain. None survived. Way to show interest for the kid's artistic manifestation...
Anyways, we overcame the loss with more acting games and improv. The smallest kids were very creative, and the bigger ones were very eloquent, but one observation made me a bit sad: there was so much influence from TV in the kids play.
I ended up channeling all the frustration from everything that went wrong into writing my project for a master's application. At least something good came out of it. I also think the kids enjoyed the work, although the final result had nothing to do with what I was expecting. In the end, I was there for them, not them for me. Hopefully I gave them something good.
Yeah, I had been back in this time, but always for short periods, for vacation basically. This time, I wanted to go have a taste again of what it is to live there. Could I go back eventually, to live there again? I was researching the answer for a question that people often ask me. Will I ever go back to live there?
I signed up to volunteer in a orphanage, teaching theatre to the kids. That would give me work to fill my days in São Paulo. Moverover, I was preparing my application for a master's program in performing arts, and I wanted my project to have something to do with my home country. Nothing better than hands-on experience to inspire me to write a good application.
Indeed I was right about getting inspiration: there are so many problems to write about! The actual teaching experience was very enriching, the kids were sweethearts and super-engaged in the activities. However, there was no commitment whatsoever from the direction of the institution, which left me with very few resources to work with. They didn't even divide the class according to age, as I asked them to. I basically had to baby-sit 15 kids from the ages of 4 to 16, at the same time, in the same room.
I wasn't there to baby-sit, so it required quite a bit of improvisation on my part to get the whole thing to work. It's good that improv was one of the things in my program. My class in masks was a great mess, but in the end it turned out ok, with a few students very interested in the craft and making beautiful work.
The saddest thing about the lack of interest from the coordination of the orphanage was that the masks we made were left out in the rain. None survived. Way to show interest for the kid's artistic manifestation...
Anyways, we overcame the loss with more acting games and improv. The smallest kids were very creative, and the bigger ones were very eloquent, but one observation made me a bit sad: there was so much influence from TV in the kids play.
I ended up channeling all the frustration from everything that went wrong into writing my project for a master's application. At least something good came out of it. I also think the kids enjoyed the work, although the final result had nothing to do with what I was expecting. In the end, I was there for them, not them for me. Hopefully I gave them something good.
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