Zhuhai Adventures

Beijing Normal and Hong Kong Baptist University established in 2005 was originally UIC United International College, the name change only occurred last year so annoyingly when we tell people where we work, they inevitably say ‘Oh you mean UIC!’
The new name connects the Uni more clearly with Hong Kong and also side steps some mainland licensing rules. For students it clearly links China to Hong Kong and thereby the rest of the world. The Uni proudly proclaims that 100% of lecturers have lived or trained abroad and that 85% of last year’s graduate cohort had confirmed places to study abroad. More importantly it is ‘the first modern university upholding Liberal Arts Education in the Chinese Mainland’ and this is a big draw for many students with diverse study interests.
The Uni has had massive infrastructure development, the campus is really a first-class facility and the build goes on…across the road Phase Two is well underway. Rob’s Boss Charles tells a story about a lecturer who returned annually for short contracts and kept complaining that: ‘you are confusing me, I can’t find my way around anymore. Every time I come you’ve built a new classroom!’
Rob has been teaching at BNBU University for three weeks before I visit. Rob has two modules, one First Year class Dramatic words and a Third or Fourth-year option called Creative Writing For Performance. He began Dramatic Words with the study of performance, this is where I come in, initially he has asked me to take three classes in the earliest known western theatre of ancient Greece.
Rob is teaching in a faculty that usually only blocks 2-hour lectures, but we need 3 hours together as performance needs rehearsal time, so to allow for this, he has been given the ‘nightshift’ we teach First Years from 6-9 pm. At the start of term we are at the tail-end of Chinese summer and it is really hot… as Caroline Ahern said so flamboyantly: ‘scorchio!’ We have to find Block 2 on floor 7, or is it Block 7 on floor 2. The Uni campus is situated outside of the City and is massive, the paths of BNBU all zigzag like Chinese bridges and in this extreme heat it is quite galling to have to walk twice as far as necessary. A beautiful sunset over the mountains and forests greets us from floor 7, when we finally find the correct classroom we are already wreathed in sweat and hit the aircon buttons which quickly cool the room down. We have a very large group for this practical subject, 30 students, none of whom have ever studied drama or theatre before. Chinese children are very driven and they are expected to participate in lots of extra-curricular activities but these are usually sports, and more culturally specific art forms, drama and theatre is not on or off the curriculum. BNBU is an English-speaking University and all students are taught in English, however, first year students are still learning and this is a very mixed ability group with some excellent linguists and others really struggling. When teaching we both try to speak clearly and slowly without being patronising. The better linguists amongst the cohort will help out by quickly translating to others who are finding it incomprehensible.
Rob reads the register and the students are delighted when he remembers their names. I am struggling- I study the photo-register all the AI airbrushed pictures look like animes of people rather than real students to me. It is very helpful that many students have swapped their Chinese for English-style names.
The class has obviously warmed to Rob he has already built an excellent rapport with them from playing drama games and creating exercises that have prepared them for our style of delivery. I start with a Power Point followed by practical drama activities and then performance and evaluation. My session goes well, I can tell that I‘m doing ok when I see Rob take a seat at the back of the class. During the practical elements all the students are fully engaged and there is much laughter and plenty of creative and playful experimentation.
In the next weeks a few things happen quite quickly:
• Rob redesigns the First-Year course- it makes far more sense to take this group to a full performance which we will start after their assessment which is based upon my Greek classes. Rob asks if I would like to come on board to help teach and direct his play ‘Tales Untold’ which would mean committing to teaching with him every Wednesday evening, I have no hesitation I would love to.
• There is a department Expo coming up, this is an event designed to encourage a diverse range of students to sign up for our department courses. Charles has asked if our First-Year students would perform their Greek performance assessment.
• Rob has to start the difficult process of trying to find more suitable rooms to rehearse this large class and also to find a suitable venue for the final performance. We find ourselves teaching in 4 different rooms over the course of the next few weeks and I never get to see the actual Uni Theatre – this is a 20 year anniversary for the Uni and the theatre is fully booked with special events.
• A new friend from the local International School asks if some of her students can come to watch the ‘Tales Untold’ performance, it seems like a good idea, Charles loves the idea of community liaison and so we make the arrangements for a school dress rehearsal matinee.
I can be helpful to Rob in many different ways. I liaise with Jane who is a graduate working as a TA for several different faculties. We organise the purchase of all the performance materials that we are going to need. She helps to create posters for our events and books all the necessary spaces and basically interacts with all the departments necessary to enable our teaching, rehearsals and performances events, even filming all of our performance assessments. She also does all of this for Rob’s third year class as well. Jane is extremely professional and organised and easy to work with. She is very complimentary about the work she sees, but it must be a little annoying to come into Uni during normal working hours and also for our very inconvenient class times, even though this is not very often.
Our rehearsal and performance space is a large events hall on the other side of the campus from Rob’s office. There is nowhere to store our props and performance materials and one of our duties becomes the trundling of these over to this hall from Rob’s office every week. We get some strange looks as we trolley 30 bamboo poles, large bamboo lanterns, masks, hats, a box of percussion instruments, bags of large cotton sheets and numerous other props. As we start at 6 pm we run into most other Lecturers going home for the day and on our journey back to the office, we meet all the ancillary staff coming in for the night shift.
Tales Untold: Rob has a creative algorithm for dividing up the scenes of the play equally between the students, meaning that everyone gets a fair percentage of the play to perform, although cunningly gracing the more able with the more challenging parts. We then divide the scenes up between us each having four tales to direct. We have approximately 5 weeks to prepare for the two performances. The dress rehearsal will be for the International School students at 2 pm and then the final performance open to all students and staff will happen at 6.30pm on the same day.
We have many concerns: How will these students who have never studied drama and theatre before take to our direction? How will they learn lines in a second language? How will we be able to school them in the discipline of using the performance materials that we have chosen? How will we arrange extra rehearsals, the necessary practice of all theatre performances, when students have absolutely no free time on their schedules? How will we maintain the enjoyment and educational value of the process when we need to forge a decent performance for the audiences we have invited?
To shortcut a summary of the whole process, it is one of the most enjoyable, challenging and rewarding of both of our careers.
Many students rise to the challenge with creativity and flair whilst some students find it difficult to concentrate and participate at times. We have a rehearsal in the week of the performances when we come away in silence unable to look at one another: We have asked far too much of these young people, what were we thinking? Lines are forgotten, movement on stage is all over the place, the performance materials are being used incorrectly. The very next day we have a rehearsal where there is much more promise. The students have gone away and learnt their lines- they must have studied some of the rehearsal videos that we have posted as movement is very much improved.
On the day both performances go very well and more importantly the students come away feeling proud and successful. They have performed for over an hour in a second language in front of school children, staff and friends, nobody has frozen or paused the performance, nobody has forgotten movements or to bring on a vital prop. They receive many compliments. Jane has arranged a little party; food and drinks have been provided. Rob and I don’t get the chance to enjoy these though, we are far too busy being asked to be in photos and with 30 students this takes a very long time. We are going to miss this class.
We are both hugely relieved and very proud of them all. They have all achieved based on their capabilities and many have exceeded their own expectations in a totally new subject. Students email Rob and I to thank us for introducing them to Drama and Theatre. Some tell us that they will continue to participate in performance as it has been so much fun. One memorable thank you details how much they have appreciated our lively body language and facial expressions! Rob gets a personal message from one student who has really been struggling since joining the University, citing Rob as his favourite teacher. Some of the most appreciated feedback we get is from Rob’s Head of Department who is delighted that each student had an opportunity to participate fully and equally in the performance enabling all to gain as much as possible from the project.
Now I can relax, but the very next day Rob has his third/fourth year assessments…and then all of the marking…