Assignment/Activity Title Dada Performance Skill Creativity

Year Freshman Portfolio Category Social Awareness

Imagine having a project where you had the freedom to address issues important to you in a creative and imaginative way. The Dada performance fit the bill. This project was an assigned in my CAP 9 Drama class. The assignment was to perform a 2-3 minute play addressing a current event or issue. This project was supposed to show what a modern day Dada play would look like today. Dada is an art movement that began in the early 20th century. The movement addressed the horrors of WWI in untraditional ways through means like theater. Dada plays in the 20th century may have seemed random but have deep meanings and messages underneath. My task was to use my creative skills to develop a performance to bring attention to an important issue to me in the nature of a Dada play. The process of creating our project was very lengthy. I formed a group with three other people. First off, we had to brainstorm ideas on a current issue or event. Our first idea was a topic regarding sexism. We wanted to expose everyday gender role stereotypes. The first step was to create a script where we constructed two scenes going on at the same time. The idea of having two similar scenes was to expose how the stereotype turned on its back would seem strange to the audience. My group members and I took turns editing to improve the script. We then realized our performance was only half the time the time limit was. I faced the challenge with my group to create another part of the play to lengthen our performance and deepen the meaning. This part of the script was harder to construct than the first part. We performed for our class our Dada performance and werent very happy with the results. We realized that the first and second part of the script addressed different ideas. Our group faced a challenge, which was to change our script and focus on a certain idea to address in our Dada play. This assignment forced me to be creative. While we were critiquing our performance, we came upon the idea to not focus on gender roles. We then completely scrapped our second part of the play. Then, we had to evolve our first part. Instead of displaying two different scenes, we created only one scene. We used creative techniques like using an inner monologue in the first scene as the scene was progressing. The second part of the scene took much thought. We decided to use our knowledge on sexism today. We took turns sharing tweets from a twitter account called @EverydaySexism explaining real experiences of sexism today. This showed how serious our issue was and how it effects our everyday lives. Our final performance turned out to be successful. I was proud of the final result after we had made the changes needed to improve our performance. Our group edited many times but was proud of the effort we put in the project to make it as well as it could be. This assignment opened new realms of creativity. Before this project, I hadnt as deeply thought of the significance or the meaning behind a performance. I realized that sometimes if a performance is too straightforward the meaning isnt as powerful. Layering a performance can often improve the effectiveness of a message. My group had to dig deep to find what would impact the audience the most. This project is important to opening up to a more creative approach. One of my weaknesses is stepping outside of the box. I like direction and specifications so I can be led and rely on others. Relying on myself can be much more challenging. I know I am a creative person, but having confidence in myself can be more difficult. For example, in sports sometimes I can have a hard time taking the fundamentals I learn and applying them or using my creativity. My confidence can be low when I have to rely on myself to be creative. If I am consistently using my creativity and relying on myself, my confidence will improve, which can all around benefit myself. This project opened my awareness to the injustices of everyday like sexism. Our use of creativity to expose this issue made the issue seem so real and bizarre to happen because of the offensiveness and wrongness of sexism. The Dada Performance opened the door for using my creativity as a tool whether its in sports, academics or becoming more aware of the issues people face everyday.

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