Reflection and Improvement

  The main theme of this performance is that how does the feud between two families aggravated the atmosphere and led to the final tragedy. The performance includes three scenes: 1.1, 1.5, 3.1. We have been always trying to show the hatred in our play; In the first scene, the members of two families started arguing and it turned out to be a fight. One thing that did not exist in the original play was Abram's death. Abram's death is our interpretation on their hatred, and it's also a extreme way to do it. In order to better present the intensity, our group even cut the prince's lines after the fight, because intervention and conciliation were existing against our main theme. I believe we were successful on showing the feud in this scene. However, as a trade, we did abandon some elements that were supposed to be significant such as the prince's role that I mentioned above. That's why our play does not present "Romeo and Juliet" in a full perspective.
  Our performance wasn't perfect. Plenty of small mistakes took place: the actors forgot to face the audience for a few times; we starred at the script for too long; and most importantly, all of us didn't express our emotions through face expressions. I didn't realize that until I watched other groups' performances. Ryan's group was definitely the best one, each actor had obvious face expressions. The lack of face expression and the varying tone made our performance a little bit plain. For example, when we were having the "deadly conversation" in Act 1 Scene 1, our faces seemed like we were just having a random talk about last night's dinner. Another example would be the moment in Act 3 Scene 1, when Mercutio was dying. Romeo didn't show enough grief and even laughed for a few times. It was just not good enough. Of course, we weren't well prepared and the absence of our group member made it even harder.
  In additional, our play was missing a significant element - music. Most of the other performances had background music and they turned out pretty impressive. Music can not only help present the atmosphere better, but also show the personalities of the actors through selecting it. I saw humor and seriousness in other groups. However, there was a new element that played pretty good role, which was the costume. We had never weared medieval costumes before, they made the performance more realistic. For example, I used to wear academic dress in performance, it didn't fit the play at all. This time, I have a green costume on, it looked much better. Also, we used the colors green and black to distinguish the Capulet and Montague.
  Our acting ability improved a lot since the first performance in this course. I added plenty of body languages in the play, and my voice was much louder. For other group members, they are much confident than before.
  After all, we tried our best to present the theme of the performance, I can see a lot of improvements in it, but the defects still exist.