231 - ✨ razzle dazzle ✨
Hey there, !
I went to the Moth recently, a storytelling night where people come up and tell a 5 minute story on a particular topic in their life, that has to be true, . I feel like the next thing I want to upgrade in my life is storytelling - just finding places that I can continue to practice and tell stories, whether fiction or non-fiction. There's an art to it that I think a lot of people do as performers, or authors, or screenwriters, or marketers, and there's so much power in a good story. See Sapiens for a more analytical view of the role of fiction in civilisation, or even The Science of Discworld II for a much funnier, storyteller view of it.
Anyway, The Moth. I went to the last one just to see what it was like, and the topic was 'DAZZLED' which I couldn't think of anything in advance, but now that I've had some time to think I thought I might try telling it here, like I might in real life. I usually just tell these stories in person, but there's some practice required to tweak and edit and refine when you write it out on the page, so here's a first(?) draft of it.
Enjoy
Life is filled with so many choices, and one of the early ones you work out...is whether you're going to be a theatre kid or not.
I grew up as an Asian in Australia, and anything in the arts was off-limits, UNLESS it was a musical instrument which would aid the neural pathways in your brain to grow better, or...some sort of drawing or calligraphy, because the fine motor skills would help to aid the neural pathways in your brain to grow better, or learning a new language...
...so that you could respect your elders at Chinese New Year by saying the words right!
Oh, and also aid the neural pathways in your brain to grow better.
(beat)
When I was in primary school, I loved the wonder of science. Learning and reading everything as voraciously as possible - getting science books to read for fun, watching science content on BBC - it's just such a super interesting subject. Rockets, explosions, black holes, the weird squiggly animals in the deep, dark ocean, and the mind-boggingly vast universe, or even parallel universes - science was filled with ideas that could capture your imagination in the wildest ways.
But what my imagination could not expect was when I was picked to be part of a 5 person team that was entering the 'Science / Drama Competition' for my primary school, having to write, act and produce in a short play that had something to do with science. All of us had to act in it, we would have to build and bring our own sets, and we would be performing at the Darebin Arts Centre in 3 months.
Performing?! That was definitely not me. I was shy, nervous and bookish, in case that wasn't already abundantly clear. I could deal with the Science part, but the Drama part? I didn't have a drama bone in my body!
But my parents saw 'SCIENCE' and 'drama', so they thought it would be good extra-curricular activity.
That would help with my brain again.
Great.
(beat)
As a quick summary of what we came up with, we had a classic Prince Charming with his bumbling assistant, who had to go fight a dragon, and rescue a damsel in distress. Except in this case the damsel didn't want to marry the prince after all that, so our Prince Charming had to use the laws of attraction (geddit) to try and woo her. This included a lot of fancy things with magnets, which we don't really need to get into, but also critically needed a way to visualise and show how these scientific things worked.
Enter, ironically, ✨magic✨.
(beat)
Since we had to show magnetic fields, the invisible North and South poles, and the budding attraction between our leads, we invented a role named 'MAGIC' that would freeze the scene, show the visualisation (like, here's a magnet, or here's her falling in love), and then jump off screen again.
Yep, you guessed it, that was me, and honestly, I reckon I got the best costume. It was mainly black, but it was also sparkly and silver, it was all the razzle dazzle you could think of (at least, for a primary school student), plus it had a big 'MAGIC' word emblazoned right on the front. Looking back, I loved the look of it, but in the moment, I remember thinking it was WAY too much. I think we were very close to just spraying my whole face with glitter, but our teacher very wisely advised against that.
My parents, ever the sticklers for arts, did see the fun in doing something like this. I think the science lens helped them get over the line, because they helped with the costume, the sets, and with me running my lines and my performance. It was so foreign to me, acting, and performing, and every time, even when I was practicing with my parents, I felt the embarrassment of being perceived. My mum would be nice, but cutting - the normal parental way - and it didn't particularly help with my nerves. I didn't think that I was doing much better than the other people in the team, but at least I had a funny role?
Now, none of that mattered, because when we got to the Darebin Arts Centre and did our 5 minute skit - I mean, play - I shined. My few moments, though scattered in between the larger plot, were some of my favourite moments - sticking poles of magnets on to the characters, putting love hearts on their cheeks, holding this big poster that showed the magnetic field of attraction getting bigger and bigger...it was exhilarating.
You don't really see the crowd, you know, but I'd like to think that the laughter was real based on my performance...rather than just polite, because we were 10.
(beat)
And even though we won, the battle for my soul stayed on the side of science for a bit. The theatre bug never really bit me from there, and I really got into spaceships.
But using that science part of my brain, I can still imagine that there's a parallel universe out there where this performance put me down the pathway of becoming a theatre kid, breaking out in bigger and better performances, and maybe even becoming a Broadway star!
Unfortunately, it's just not this one.
Thanks.
Chat soon :)
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