Hello to all our lovely friends! You may be wondering how have we been doing? You may now be wondering are we still breathing through the ordeal? You may be wondering if you could register anytime soon? You may be wondering if coordinating a drama was easy? You may be wondering if there are any juicy plot points about the drama? You may be wondering if the experiential and exhibition booths are gonna be exciting? You may be wondering why I am not answering these questions, instead of trying to ask more? (my groupmate is going to throw a slipper at me if I don’t stop…Don’t worry…it’s common for slippers to fly around in an ordinary Documenters meeting) Well fret not! For this blog post seeks to answer every burning question that your poor anticipating heart have been yearning to hear.
Let’s begin with how Santa Claus kinda got his address mixed up after the busy night of delivering pretty gifts to well-behaved children around the globe. He was supposed to be performing at a Christmas Drama but alas, he bumped into ours, abruptly in the middle of rehearsing our fighting scenes. Having him around was an interesting and ho-ho-honourable experience as he tours the 5 different committees and investigates if every member had contributed well to the event (why? Oh that’s because he wants to cross them off from the naughty list…) So, let’s dive straight in to what Santa has discovered going on among the committees the past week! To do that, we are going to show you an appeal letter written by Santa to the Naughty Children Association at the North Pole:
Dear Mr. Grump,
You heard of my unforeseen arrival in the middle of some drama rehearsal at Nanyang Polytechnic, somewhere in this beautiful country known as Singapore. Upon seeing me, the students frantically welcomed me and started explaining what they as the whole Unspoken (the name of their event) committee had done so far. They told me that many rehearsals had passed by where different casts came down to practice delivering their scenes. Adeeb, their drama teacher, had been labouring heavily as he taught the casts how to develop their characters to be more relatable and real to the audience. Adeeb had also coordinated how the casts should deliver their stage presence and how they should move about and position themselves on the stage. From where eye glances should be directed to who should enter the stage first to pronouncing the ‘s’ and ‘t’s of their lines clearly, it was nothing short of committed work by both Adeeb, the drama casts and of course, the whole committee. Good news, Mr. Grump, they have finished rehearsing all their 20 scenes at least once, and the following 2 to 3 weeks are for them to finetune their acting to pack a dramatic punch to the overall drama experience! But that’s not all, I heard that their event would also have many exciting experiential and exhibition booths available for the participants…more on that later! I had to investigate whether any member had been naughty for not contributing to this event…so off I go!
I first went to the Programme committee and heard what they had been doing so far for the past week. They have finally presented their photobooth idea to their lecturer-in-charge, Saras, and received her approval! Participants on the event day can use the photobooth to take a lovely picture of themselves to post onto their social media accounts as a way of demonstrating their support for people with mental illnesses and to say no to undesired discrimination. The comm has also done the event’s carpark management where around 6 volunteers are positioned along the carpark routes, with umbrellas, to direct traffic flow into this cool carpark near the Foodgle foodcourt, far south of the NYP campus (wonder if I could park my sleigh there too!) The comm had also finalised the verbatim script of the audio contents to be played for the experiential booths. They are currently finding 3 people to record their voices for the Anxiety, OCD and Depression booths. Participants will be listening to these audio recordings, when participating in the booths, as an opportunity to hear the unspoken voices behind each mental illness. The comm is also preparing signages and a duty list for committee members for the event day. 2 of their members are preparing their script for a panel talk during the drama. They also reviewed their budget list and is finished sourcing out for cheaper printing options together with the logistics comm. Lastly, after countless of meetings, they have proudly completed the instruction and debrief sheets for each experiential booth, not forgetting the event evaluation forms, all ready for printing! But this was no easy task, they met often and it has come to my attention that their meetings had been really long. Once they were too tired to open the meeting room door for their groupmate, Linus, and would rather leave him stranded and waiting outside, for apparently no reason (Linus claimed that he almost cried). Pretty naughty children I must say they are…but considering that they opened the door after some time and the amount of work they had completed so far, I shall reserve my judgement.
On to the Logistics committee, they were truly giving their very best to make every rehearsal a smooth and fruitful one. All their members had to come down for every single rehearsal, not just that, they had to arrive 30 minutes earlier to carry logistics (like tables, chairs and instruments) from their school block to the Theatre for the Arts (TFA), where the rehearsals were held. Is that all? No! They were the ones responsible of bringing the logs back up and out of the TFA after every rehearsal. In every rehearsal, they recorded notes on how to coordinate the sound, microphones, stage lighting and projection of backdrops. They showed Saras their stage management plans for Scenes 1 to 15 and she was indeed impressed by their work. She commented on how the team should also pay attention to the props needed and the wardrobe. It’s interesting to gain insights on how a change of attire is a subtle indicator of the storyline time passing by during the drama! They had also recruited many volunteers from their own and junior cohorts for which many exciting roles would be given to them, such as going backstage to mic up the casts, give cues and even facilitating the overall management of the experiential booths. They are currently working on sourcing out non-copyrighted photo backdrops (being the good children they are) for the drama. For volunteer management, they are starting to prepare for a mass volunteer briefing next year, 3 Jan, about the details of the full dress rehearsals and provide them annotated scripts of what each unique volunteer role had to do on the event day itself. Sounds confusing? Of course it is! Yet the team pulled through and is constantly supporting one another with lots of laughter and inappropriate jokes to destress. They agreed to always meet for lunch together mid-rehearsal and, for that treasured moment, not to talk about work. They paced together, laughed together, cried together, raged together, complained together, covered up for each other, carried logs together, and most importantly… worked together (Impressive I must say!)
Next, on to the Sponsorship committee, they are also working hard at their given assignments. After ho-ho-hours of designing and conceptualising, they are confirming the content of their exhibition boards with Clarity and are planning to print them out by next week (heard that it looks beautiful!) The goodie bag collaterals from IMH came in on Tuesday! Yay! And the comm quickly brought them to the storage room (which is really their classroom…but don’t worry about it…) that had all the other collaterals for files to pens to mini-guide books and to cool awesome bags. I asked if they wanted me to sponsor them any leftover gifts from my Christmas delivery, but they kindly declined as my gifts were a little too big to fit into the goodie bag (Rudolph agreed). Their goodie bags are expected to be packed full for the delight of every participant that comes for the event. Mr. Grump, you should have one bag for yourself, definitely would cheer you up! Okay…back to the comm, this is their last week of contacting more organisations for sponsorship products before they start focusing more on designing a ‘show your support’ booth at the event. They had also reached out to their cohortmate volunteers to pack a total of 800 goodie bags in 2 days, 11 and 12 Jan. They are way more efficient than my elves that’s for sure!
Well…remember when I interrupted their drama rehearsals? Yup, I saw this young chap that threatened he would bite anybody who dares to disturb him… pretty agitated and naughty is he indeed. Turns out, it was this student named Bryan, the student that went overseas while his other groupmates were burning the last ounce of midnight oil in editing the script. I asked about how his comm had been doing, and this followed: The Documenters comm had already updated their website for the event with the launched poster and logo (more to that later)! They had also contacted Clarity and Saras for their approval before making their website live and public for all to see. They had to do some editing with the Resources page to make it seem less cluttered and with the Contact Us page to keep it updated with the latest contact details. They added captions to their documenting videos on their blog page as well…wait…talking about blog page, I bring you wonderful news! Their blogging is better than ever! They have officially launched their blogging webpage in the event website too with over 10 weekly blog posts. I had a really great laugh at their written humour and creativity! Not just that, they have launched another documenter video about the drama casting results being released! The Documenters comm had to collaborate with the Logistics comm to make sure that the script is finalised and update each other on any changes to the storyline flow. The Documenters comm continued to take video snippets and to interview different comm members for their weekly blog and vlog documentation. So back to Bryan, I asked if he did anything and he claimed that he and his groupmate, Atika, who was overseas as well, did try their very best to make up for their absence (read Week 10’s blog post for context). Atika helped with making sure all documentation inputs from the different comms were compiled and edited while Bryan, after arriving from his trip, is currently working on the blogging of the remaining 3 to 4 posts, promising not to type anything stupid in the process of doing so. Hence in my assessment, I am going to remove their names from the naughty list. The whole comm’s dynamics and dedication is truly remarkable as they all worked together to tidy up the blogs and send them for vetting and approval. Stay excited and stay reading, Mr. Grump!
Lastly, on to the Publicity comm, this is where it gets juicy! Their publicity poster had already been finalised and approved by both Saras and Clarity! They have already been printed and is now waiting for their school’s Student Development Office (SDO) to give their approval before the posters goes live around the whole campus! Very exciting! They have also received a clear green light to post all they have planned for their social media publicity campaign! (Please follow them @unspokennyp on Instagram!) I heard that there would be around 20 publicity posts ready to bring a fresh vibrancy to all their social media followers. Mr. Grump, are you not one of them yet? Please follow them now! The Publicity comm have also made their online registration live and is receiving a tremendous response! In one night, a total of 54 completed registrations were made, most of whom were tertiary students!
Therefore, Mr. Grump, after assessing the amount of work every team member had contributed to raise awareness for such a noble cause. I would like to appeal to you to remove all their names from the naughty list of your association. I am going to send them double the presents next year. I am increasingly ho-ho-hopeful of their upcoming event!
Signed with bellyful of cheers,
Santa Claus of the North Pole
Okie….so that is all from us for this week, thank you for reading thus far! Before we leave, we ask the question: What grows shorter as time goes by?
Todd (a character from our drama) exclaimed, “A pencil!”
Santa Claus contributed, “A Christmas candle!”
But as for the ordinary Unspoken committee student, no other answer is more fitting than “the time left before 14 Jan”. But what is that to a team single-mindedly focused in achieving a successful event? The Unspoken team is keeping strong, faithfully pressing on harder and collaborating with greater cooperation like never before. This week had been incredibly tough and lots of work had been done. As for whether Santa really did visit us, that’s really a question of whether you believe Santa does exist! 😉
Time is short, yet Unspoken remains undaunted. Thank you for your continuous support and we wish you a joyful Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you next year!