The future’s looking bright for FOBISIA drama

Holly Sullivan & Paul Hannon

Respecitvely: Head of Creative and Expressive Arts Faculty, The Alice Smith School Kuala Lumpur, and Chair of the FOBISIA Drama Executive Committee; and Head of Drama & Theatre, The British School Manila, and Teacher Events Rep, FOBISIA Drama Executive Committee

After two years teaching our practical subject via Zoom, Drama teachers the world over are excited to get back into our studios and start making theatrical magic with our students once again. The FOBISIA Drama community have hit the ground running with a number of exciting events for the new academic year.

EVENTS FOR TEACHERS:

FOBISIA Drama Annual General Meeting

The AGM, hosted by the Alice Smith School, Kuala Lumpur, saw Drama teachers from across the FOBISIA community come together via Zoom to celebrate the fantastic events for students and teachers of the past year, look ahead to the events already planned for this year and to launch the exciting new communications platform FOBISIA Connect. Our thanks to everyone who contributed and attended.

Following the AGM, FOBISIA Drama in association with British School Manila launched straight into the two day Ready, Steady Fly eConference 2022.

DAY 1 began with a practical masterclass conducted by renowned UK verbatim theatre company The Paper Birds. Hosted by Tanglin Trust School Singapore, participants explored The Paper Bird’s five point approach and examples from current and past productions for creating new, original and contemporary theatre. Thereafter participants chose from a variety of peer workshops to attend including Live Cinema and Performance, The use of Half Masks in Drama, Reflection in Drama, Technical Theatre and Solo Performance.

DAY 2 focused more on pedagogy and the individual professional. Participants spent time considering inclusion and representation in their teaching and classrooms. Thank you to Thea Williams and Denver Castillo from British School Manila for sharing their work-to-date and many immediate strategies for fostering safe and inclusive spaces in Drama and Arts Education. In preparation for yet another busy year ahead, Nicole Glisson from Applied Wellbeing in Education guided attendees through a workshop exploring The Upside of No and the self esteem triad: emotions, needs and boundaries.

During the plenary, FOBISIA Drama was excited to launch the newly rebranded Drama Thursdays now called Spotlight On… The first Spotlight On was planned to explore the CIE Pre-release material for IGCSE Drama (Zone 4 and Zone 5) and collaboratively create teaching resources.

EVENTS FOR STUDENTS:

FOBISIA Stage Make-Up Challenge

This brand new event is FOBISIA Drama’s first foray into online challenges for technical theatre students. If you have any budding make-up artists in your midst, get them to share their talents at the FOBISIA Stage Make-Up Challenge. Judged by West End MUA Tanya Noor, students can enter categories as diverse as fantasy to celebrity, halloween to heritage. Get your beauty blenders at the ready and get involved! For more information email stagemakeup@alice-smith.edu.my

Keep an eye our for Term 2 and 3 students events, our first face-toface festival post-Covid, Children for Change hosted by the team at Garden International School, Eastern Seaboard Thailand, the new evolution of our annual Monologue Challenge ‘Modernising Shakespeare’ hosted by Garden International School, KL and a new event on the calendar - the Mask Creation and Performing Challenge hosted by BISHCMC. More information to follow. If you would like to find out more about any of these events, please join the FOBISIA Drama Connect page by clicking on this link. Or email any of the committee

• Holly Sullivan, FOBISIA Drama Chair at hsullivan.ep@alice-smith.edu.my

• Paul Hannon, FOBISIA Drama Teacher Event Lead at phannon@britishschoolmanila.org

• Matt Trearty, FOBISIA Drama Student Event Lead at matthew.trearty@regents.ac.th

• Joe Wyatt, FOBISIA Drama Media and Communications Lead at wyatt.j@gardenschool.edu.my