Secondary Newsletter 16 – January 14, 2021
Grade 10 Personal Project Update
Counselling Corner
BIS Theatre Spotlight
Service as Action Expo!
Grade 10 Personal Project Update
G10 students have been busy creating, learning, and reflecting on their personal projects. They began this whole journey nearly 10 months ago, and since then, these 15 and 16 year olds have created their own cruelty-free cosmetics, termite-free lockers, photography pieces, novels/videos/documentaries, websites for eco-products, and to market their own music, a cookbook, as well as a custom-designed dog house and a 3-D model of a house. They’ve been busy! Enjoy some screenshots of their creations below:
Their whole report draft is due January 31, 2022. This will be their last chance to get feedback from their supervisors before they turn in their final report and product on February 24, 2022. (Learn more about this whole project on our website here.)
Also, please save the date:
March 10, 2022, will be the Personal Project Exhibition. Please be ready to come to school and talk to these bright students about their journey, the skills they have learned, and all about their products. It will be a celebration of a major achievement, and we look forward to seeing you there!
Counseling Corner
There are new updates on the counselor corner at the BIS website
We have pages on Social & Emotional well-being as well as college counseling.
For college counseling, we regularly update the pages with University updates on Open Days, Scholarships, webinars, and news on Applications
As we are in the middle of the application season, we also start receiving offers from Universities.
Congratulations to those students who have received an acceptance letter for their preferred Universities.
BIS Theatre Spotlight
Journey Of An Artist – Character Development Process by Cintya Roby, DP Theatre student
To demonstrate acting technique in practice and integrate new insights of psycho-physicality and other Stanislavsky ideas, Cintya experimented with the character of Morticia and developed several performances leveraging her actor’s instrument – which is comprised of body, face, voice, and mind – to fulfill her directorial and artistic intentions for the piece.
“During the first semester of DP Theatre course, I learned about the different theater specialist roles and really dove deeper into the job of an actor and how they are able to portray their character, as well as explored Stanislavski’s “method acting”. In order to understand the specific role of an actor, I was given an acting challenge which was to become the character Morticia from the Addams Family. This at first seemed easy, I would just have to research about her and everything will come together but when I started to play around with the character, I found it difficult to really let this “third being” shine through. This is when I realized how important psycho-physicality is as it is the ability to connect the actions you do with your emotions or your psyche. Psycho-physicality is one of the (if not, the) most important concepts in method acting as it allows the actor to enter this inner creative state in which ideas flow easily out of the mind and body. It was important for me to research Morticia and find my lure to her in order to really analyze her as a character. I found that I was intrigued by her movements and the way she is able to hold herself as well as her confidence. With that in mind, I was able to create my own version of Morticia who exemplified these traits.
Once I solidified my version of Morticia, I needed to recruit another person in order to really explore the dynamics of the Addams family. I was able to explore the role of a director and understand the impact they have on the performance. As I am the only student in theater, I had to teach Adrien how to become Gomez through the use of method acting. Once again, research proved to be important as it gives us a better understanding of how the family interacts with one another and the main problem they were facing. I then realized that it would be beneficial to start physically embodying the character as that would help both of us to become more comfortable with the script and the characters we were portraying. This proved to be helpful because we were then able to play around with the gestures and in turn develop some interaction between the two characters. Throughout the process, we worked together to create the scene that we performed at the assembly. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other and give each other pointers on what to do. This process was fun to do as the script was interesting and showed the dynamics of Gomez and Morticia. This helped me develop my directing skills as I always had to reflect on the impact of the actions we were doing on the audience and how we were going to share the story of the Addams Family to those who might not have seen it. In the end, we were able to produce a good performance that I am proud of using some elements of method acting while also exploring specific theater specialist roles. “
Service as Action Expo!
The secondary school celebrated their Service learning achievements on the afternoon of the last Thursday of semester 1. Each Service as Action group decorated a large display board with information about their goals, events, some reflective comments, and pictures of their collaborative journey in helping our community. Below are some photos from the event, stay tuned to see the meaningful and impactful new projects for semester 2.
