Irreplaceable work of CA musical

  The show Once on This Island is a fabulous work based on the novel My love my love, or the peasant girl. The show is in the form of musical, it's a very high quality performance in many aspects.

  First of all, religion occupies a huge portion of the original play. In Once on This Island, the impression of the gods was outstanding, each goddess had their strong characteristics that were shown by different paintings and props. Agwe had a lot of oceanic patterns on her, which indicated her identity. Erzulie - the goddess of love was dressed in red costume, warming up the whole atmosphere. Asaka fitted exactly in the background, her green and brown costumes seemed to provide her camouflage in the forest. Papage was my favorite one, I could feel smell of death all over her character. Details such as the skulls on her stairs provided audience a strong vision of her. The actors really did great jobs in expressing each god's thoughts. Take another example of Papage, her laugh was definitely one of the highlights in the play, it was so creepy and haunted. Also, light effect played an significant role in the gods' parts. Each goddess had the background lights that fitted their costumes. Agwe was the goddess of ocean so she had blue light around her. Those blue lights were amazing when the scene of storm and rain began. It looked like that the ocean was going to devour the whole stage. 

  Secondly, the love story between Desiree and Daniel was fully presented in the play. The detailed introduction scenes illustrates the background stories behind Desiree and Daniel. When audience started to understand that Desiree was a poor peasant girl and Daniel was a rich young man, the gap between the young lovers was more obvious. Costumes were also important in presenting their identities. Daniel was in a nice white suit which made a contrary to Desiree's peasant dress. The most unforgettable scene of the lovers was when Daniel betrayed Desiree and started to date Andrea, it was really a touching moment. Their twisted relationship between them really attracted audience's attentions. 

  I think the performance couldn't be such successful without the "villagers", who had been always standing behind Desiree. They really gave the audience a full view of the "poor" but nature side. Not only Desiree, but all the villagers had "scruffy" clothing, they exist as a family. Characters like Tonton and Mama were outstanding characters too, they made the story more colorful. 

  As a successful musical, the music crew behind the scenes were the biggest contributors. Their consistent performance supported every moments in the play. The music made the atmosphere vivid and the emotions from characters were strengthened by it. When it's cheerful moment, the music became convivial; when it's sad moment, the music became depressed. My favorite part had been always the main theme, it repeated so many times that it couldn't get out of my head. 

  In conclusion, the musical was really successful, and gave me a new perspective to the novel. I love it!

 

Oral presentation first draft

  My internal assessment performance is based on the novel, "My love, my love, or the peasant girl" which was written by Rosa Guy. The novel illustrates a tragic love story, based on the setting that people are separated by social divisions and economic status. The main character: Desiree is a peasant girl from the poor village who fell in love with a rich young man named Daniel though a car accident. The gap between the rich and the poor peasants is the main argument in the novel. Thoughout the entire plot, Desiree was trapped and stumbled by her love and the story eventually ended up with her death. On contrary, her soul mate - Daniel got to build up a new relationship with another woman and still lived in his rich side of the world. This setting provides such a strong comparison that brings audience different understandings to the book and especially, make them shows sympathy to the main character. Our performance serves to maximize this conflict with different adaptations.
  We made efforts on presenting the difference between rich and poor in several ways. First of all, the staging was what made our performance special. My group set stageright as the "poor area" and stageleft as the "rich area", to show a distinct contradiction between the two social levels. In addition to that, our group used light effect to distinguish the two sides also. When the scene is taken place on the rich side, there will be spotlight focus on that side only and vice versa. This way, the two worlds are no longer existing at the same time. Also, the arrangement of scene orders became a significant factor. The abbreviated scene selection keeps the performance in a fair length  and also, guarantees our performance's understanding to the essence of the original work. Our performance did not change the overall story development but instead, added a few scenes to strengthen the idea of difference. For example, we created three private conversations between Daniel and his father Monsieur Gabriel. Those dialogues did not exist in the original novel, but they serve as contradictions to Desiree and Her father Tonton in our performance.
  My character in the performance is Monsieur Gabriel, Daniel's father. He is an rich man who shows a strong discrimination against the Poors, especially to Tonton. His has both arrogant and didactical character voices depends on who he is talking to. He shows a hard attitude towards Tonton while treating his son with dignity. From hearing that his son got injured to picked him up from the village, Gabriel's character developed a stronger contempt to the Poor side along the scenes. During the process of designing Gabriel's lines, my group tried to add several factors such as classical music and expensive foods to show that Gabriel is a well-educated man.
  In conclusion, our performance needs more work on Character developments and there are several things that I personally need to improve. I utilized a lot of rising tones to indicate Gabriel's aristocratic identity but I still can't make the character more like a father compare to Daniel. More practice and thinking definitely helps and I've been learning how to create a older characteristic by listening to other's instructions.

Review&Reflection

  It's been an interesting process to witness how our group came out with the idea that to show the contrast between rich and poor, and how we interpret it in the performance. The idea is based on a setting that was already existed in the original novel. Our group extracted certain parts from the novel, and edited it so that it shows the essence of the theme. Also, we added adaptations to make the idea clearer and easier to understand for the audience. The theme of showing contrast between rich and poor actually works quite efficiently on presenting the novel's spirit. One of the author's main goals in the book, is to distinguish different social levels in Haiti, so our theme reflects the author's idea in a great degree. In additional, it's a simple concept that nearly all of the audience can understand without trouble. However, that simple concept in the book might be a little vague to the readers because of all the other elements are mixing to together, like a big melting pot. For example, in the book, Ti Moune's character tends to be someone that embraces the nature a lot and really religious, other than just a poor peasant girl. So, our group's performance only gives a focus on her poor side, to make her identity as a peasant more distinctive to the audience, so it gives a whole new perspective of the novel. And of course, we made Daniel and his father - Gabriel two rich but horrible guys to show a contrast. In the original novel, they don't have a lot of parts, but we made these two characters standing out to decorate our idea, so that's kind of a creative way to do it.

  To me, my parts in the performance doesn't always go well. First of all, acting out the characteristics of Gabriel was really a challenge to me, he doesn't have a lot of lines in the novel, so I can't really have a deep understanding on this character. However, I do have my own interpretation of him as a rich jerk that discriminate against poor people. I made a lot of effort in creating his lines in order to show his arrogant and aristocratic personalities. That's sort of a success. Being rich and fool is only one side of him, the other side, which is being a father is even more difficult to present. I had trouble in acting him as Daniel's father, but more like a friend of his. It's not an easy job since Ryan and I are about the same age and I have to act 30 years older. It might be easier to edit Gabriel's line to make him more of a mature character, but my acting skill is the main problem that needs to be solved. Lastly, being able to express all of his lines fluently became a challenge too, Gabriel needs that piece of fluency to show his confidence as a rich person and a father. I need to work on memorization more.

  In general, the performance is going well, and it's a good reflection to the novel. I'll keep working on my parts to make it better.