The power of being special

  To best demonstrate the novel, I would highlight three aspects in my performance: Kahu's emotion changes adapting to the atmosphere, centering her and her interaction with the whales. The scenes that contains these three elements are the backbones of the story and they provides audience sufficient understandings to the spirit of it.

*narrator perspective

  The author made a lot of efforts in illustrating women’s struggle against the traditionsand people’s discrimination, which was mainly reflected on Kahu's experiences. My performance's first goal would be to decorate her scenes. The main source of discrimination to Kahu is from her grandfather. He does not see her as the village's future while putting high expectations on the other boys. There are a few scenes that explain that point, such as the scene when Kahu performs brilliantly but the grandfather did not show up. In this scene, I would add several adaptations to maximize Kahu's disappointed emotions. Since the performance is great, I would make the scene looks spectacular to make a contrast with the contempt from the grandfather. Bright music on the background and shining spotlight on Kahu. Kahu would be wearing orange and blue dresses - orange represents her persistence in being the hope of the village, and blue shows her connection to the ocean. All of the boys dance behind her with darker light, makes her the center of the show. Another adaptation that serves as the highlight of Kahu's perspective can be actors's facial expressions, such as that she cries with a smile on the face. This illustration really shows Kahu's two sides of world, one with her good dreams about the future and the other one with the pressures from life. Her smile shows how she is proud of herself when she is able perform the traditions so well, and her tears tells the audience how sad she is when the loved grandfather is absent. Also,  smile-and-tear performance can be added on several other scenes, such as the moment when she leaves the village with the herd of whale. The smiles shows that she is thrilled to be the new whale rider and the tears illustrates her fear and sadness. In order to make Kahu the center with this scene, I would put the villagers in the corner and spectates her leaving, and of course, the light spots at the middle. All of her emotions and tears are fully presented this way.
  The interaction of Kahu and the whale is one of the most amazing parts of the novel. In chapter seventeen, the author used an expression to show the gap between the human and nature, "We have lost our way of talking to the whales." However, the whale can communicate to Kahu somehow, and he keeps asking: "Ko Paikea?" I would make some efforts in this scene because, this "mission impossible" of whale communicating to human demonstrates how Kahu is so different and the magical realism aspect. I would use blue spotlights to focus on Kahu and the whale, and dark light on all the other people, to show their private world and conversations. The whale's character might be difficult to demonstrate, so I would turn it into a person, so the communication makes more sense. This adaptation can be achieved by moving the whale model in the scene, and with the short period of lights out, a person with blue clothing shows up to take its place.
  Those are the aspects and adaptations I would use to stage the scene.