Ms Chang Mei Yee conducted a reminiscence theatre project with seniors from Jurong Spring Community Centre. My role as a documentalist and student-facilitator was to: (1) help document the process on social media platforms (i.e. Facebook and Instagram); (2) guide the elderly during the drama sessions; and (3) design the radio-recordings-cum-soundtracks for the performance.
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| Session 3, 10 Oct 2015 | Initial sessions had student-facilitators enacting the elderly's ideas. |
Session 8, 28 Nov 2015 | I did a video to summarise and document an activity where we explored dialect nursery rhymes with the elderly.
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| Session 10, 26 Dec 2015 | I helped seniors understand the script. |
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| Session 14, 30 Jan 2016 | Recording an elderly's narration which will be part of the soundscape. |
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| Session 21, 9 Mar 2016 | Using the radio-recordings-cum-soundscapes during the rehearsals with the seniors. |
The reminiscence theatre project was the first community arts project that I have been involved in.
Headed by my lecturer, Ms Chang Mei Yee, the reminiscence theatre project set out to explore dialects in Singapore and how its usage has changed over the years. It was carried out with seniors at Jurong Spring Community Centre. Through the sessions, we explored how dialects were used in the seniors' everyday lives in the past as well as the cultural significance of 3 dialects - Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew. Ms Chang weaved the seniors' inputs and stories together into a performance.
The script was altered in order to ease the rehearsal process. In order to help the seniors during the performance, some of the scenes were recorded and designed to become radio-recordings-cum-soundtracks. It was during this process of working with the seniors to record the soundtracks that I witnessed how they co-created with us - they told us what sound effects they wanted played; and whether it was too short.
As my first community arts project, it was definitely an eye-opener to the dynamics while working with a community and seniors. It has been informative to some considerations I ought to have if I wish to embark on a community arts project in the future.