Say Hello to 2011 !!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! What a wonderful way to spend the first day of the year! Gabe and I went to our friends wedding on Jan 1st :) It was our first time experiencing a full on Hong Kong wedding!! Gabe was Martin's best man and I was Wendy's bridesmaid! Playing games from the early morning (Gabe had to swallow a huge bugs!) , eating great food, watching their slide shows, the day was fantastic! The bride Wendy's speech put everyone in tears!! She spoke to hear parents in Cantonese, so I didn't understand everything what she said, but I was in tears! couldn't stop!! How amazing! the feeling of love for someone is a universal language. Love for our parents, love for each other, love for our friends.. love for our neighbors.

明けまして、おめでとうございます。 ２０１１年、世界中が愛に溢れた一年になりますように。

Say Good-bye to 2010...

Say good bye to the year 2010. I honestly loved this year. The theme of 2010 was " Make it happen, God got your back." I tried my best and really enjoyed every single step of the journey. Starting from the No-rwegian Wood theatre production on Jan 1st, my year was full of creation after creation. I learned a lot from making theatre, film, dance and painting work. It was a fruitful year. In each project, I felt that if I give my all to the process, the outcome is beyond my control. I also learned that trying too hard or having unnecessary intentions can blind me from other amazing things that I can learn from it. So just let it be...

I also watched "Groundhog Day" for the first time this year. The movie made me re-analyze my own work and also my attitude towards life in general. Where am I trying to get to? And why am I doing what I do? Life is full of learning. It was a great movie :)))

And one more sharing from this last year 2010. I attended the acting workshop with Jeanne Harman for the second time. I had crazy busy days with work, but it was very important for me to become her student again and absorb every juicy wisdom that she always offers us. One thing that stood out this round for me was that I judge myself too much. Wanting to do my very best job gets in my way sometimes. And of course I feel bad when I don't do my best work. However, I need to be the character before I am "the actress". Everyone has their bad days and bad auditions, but the important thing is to commit and stay in the character in the moment, before my ego of wanting to do my very best job. Audition, cold reading is always the hard part, but "I should have done this", or "I couldn't do this"... is really a pointless. ENJOY and FOCUS on the detective work as an actress. Because that's what I love the most anyways :) It was also inspiring to meet many great talented, passionate people again :)

Next post will be, "Say Hello to 2011..." =D

Ordained by Heaven

Super late updates as usual... finally I am uploading behind the scene production photos from November. "Ordained by Heaven" It was a performance that I joined by Not So Loud theatre company. I played a role of female general and second wife of Mr. Missing Something (clown-protagonist). It was an adaptation of Beijing Opera by Li Yu. How often do I get a chance to say I performed in a story from Qing dynasties! (1610-1680) Directed by Tom Hope and translated in English by Martin Merz, the story was presented with Jerry Springer style narration! It was a great experience to learn a little bit more about Beijing Opera from Ghaffar Pourazar who came to Hong Kong for this production. Ghaffar's workshop truly inspired me as a performer. His devotion and passion for Beijing Opera was so deep and it was amazing to hear his story of how he learned Beijing Opera being Iranian-British. (www.beijingopera.info)

I also helped them painting our original masks for the performance. I was a fun comedy performance where I made many great friends!!

Musicians: You guys were so awesome!!!!

Red Dragonflies screening in Tokyo!!!

Last week, I recieved a great news from the director of Red Dragonflies Jiekai Liao. The featured film that I had a part in, will be screening at Tokyo International Film Festival on Oct 26th and the 29th!!!

The film has been getting a lot of great reviews!

Thanks again for the cast and crew for the amazing time in Singapore! I miss all the amazing food that I tried and warm friends that I met there.

Here is the link to one of the review for Red Dragonflies !!

To find more about Tokyo International Film Festival!

Thank you!

From Portrait to Doodles

-photos from the opening night-

Thank you everyone so much for your continuous support :) The night was fun and it was good to share at last! Thank you EVENT for letting me speak about my work at SPEAK UP!

Sincerely,
Haruka