ISTA reflection due -- 500 words -- post on your blog: What were the most memorable experiences you had and what did you learn?

While at ISTA, I learned many things. In my ensemble, we worked on pick up scenes. I found this to be very interesting. Seeing peoples different interpretations of the same 30 words really inspired me. I also loved having the opportunity to work with different people. There were people from all over there world in my ensemble. Having these different outlooks really allowed for a lot of creativity in the shows. Also, in my ensemble, we worked on this really interesting exercise for stimulus. We each picked old postcards that spoke to us and spent 10 minutes just looking at the illustration on the front. My postcard had a beautiful drawing of a tiny red house with a black buggy outside and a horse in the   field next to it. There were also lots of roads coming off the sides of the house, all going in different directions. I interpreted this as someone on a journey trying to figure out which path is the right one to choose. Each path was slightly different which I felt signified different strengths and weaknesses in each ambition. Turning this then into a 10 minute play was such a wonderful experience. The collaboration and detail oriented people in my group really created this incredible thing.

We also did master class with the tectonics and the Beijing opera. I thought both of these were super interesting. Personally, I liked the tectonics better. The concepts we covered in that class were much more interesting to me. The leader of the master class did this really cool thing where he asked all of us our favorite moment of theater we had ever seen and everyone came up with different moments. We eventually came to the realization that script in a show is one of the least important things. Everyones moments were all with lighting or movement or something else. I really liked this concept. Movement on stage is one of my favorite things so it was very validating to hear how important it is. In Beijing Opera, we did some work with sticks. Similar to color guard, we did some twirling and spinning with the sticks. I haven't done anything like that in like 5 years so it was super exciting to go back to it.

Finally, at ISTA I made so many new and incredible friends. Meeting people from all over the world including Colorado, Florida, Belgium, and many other places was absolutely amazing. I love meeting people who have the same interests as me so this as a wonderful experience.