What did you learn today? - Dawn Yiu

I watched the play "What did you learn today?" on the 15th of  January. 

I really like this play a lot after watching it as it was very unique. Instead of the normal plays where the actors just act on stage and just be in role and having a storyline, this play however is actually made up by small sections of the play being joined together to form 1 whole play. Where there is no story line for the whole play but a stimuli, whereas the storyline is being implanted in the small sections of the play to create one drama. The actors interacted and engaged with the audience. In the midst of the play there would be a few seconds or a minute of interval when the actors can take a water break and converse to the audience.

I think the message that this play was trying to tell us today is that whatever we do, wherever, whenever, we can always learn something from it. For every time the characters want to change to another stimuli/act, there would always be this time when we are suppose to meditate on a stimuli which is being given to us, and I thought that that was very meaningful because while we are watching this play, besides learning 'something' from this play, I get to think back about what I have been doing since growing up, and to learned that I have to start learning from my mistakes.

What impacted me the most was actually the part where Neo Swee Lin was talking about her younger times and how she actually misses her mother after her mother passed away. 

As to why, it is actually because while I was watching this segment of the play, I realised the great effort and sleepless night that our mothers have put in to let us study and have a better lifestyle, while we just go home everyday and complain about having too much homeworks, not knowing the efforts our mothers have to put into to let us study. Well, my mother was also the eldest child of the family and similarly to Swee Lin's mother she also had to sacrifice her studies for her younger siblings. Hence when she was talking about her mother, I realised that I actually missed my mother a lot and it actually made me think about 'things' and this was actually (why) that part of the play impacted me the most. 

I think that the little stories formed to make up the phases of life of what Lim Kay Siu, Neo Swee Lin and even some of us  has been through and what they have learned from it.

There was this part of the play where Lim Kay Siu is acting as a small kindergarden boy, and Neo Swee Lin acting as his mother.

Kay Siu was imitating a voice of a young kindergarden's boy whereas Swee Lin was imitating a voice of a stern, motherly voice. Without any props used, the relationship between the two characters can be seen very clearly, through their movement and language. 

As the mother sees her son, she hugged him tightly holding him closed to her as he wraps his around her waist 

I think that what they are trying to achieve for this scene is that they are trying to show the type of relationship the between the mother and son, whether it is close or distant.