In class writing based on "Nature is what we see"

  The poem is consist of one stanza with 12 lines. It's relatively short but really meaningful. Dickinson listed a lot of different things in nature in the poem, such as the hill, the afternoon, the squirrel. She also used three repeating similar sentences as main arguments: "Nature" is what we see; Nay—Nature is Heaven—Nature is what we hear; Nay—Nature is Harmony—Nature is what we know. These sentences kind of repeal each other but explain the general idea of what nature is in different perspective, with the help of listed natural things below each. The rhyme(words) of the poem appears randomly at the end of a few sentences, such as "see", "bee", "sea", "harmony" and most importantly at the end - "simplicity". Speaking of simplicity, the poem gives her perspective to the power of nature at the end: "So impotent Our Wisdom is To her Simplicity". She truly believes that the nature has such great power, existing everywhere and has sensational effect on human beings. None of us can overpower the nature even though it's such "simplicity". Among the examples of what she listed in the poem, things tend to be everywhere: "thunder", "sea", "bumble bee". She tried to use the diversity of things to explain how nature exists everywhere in our lives. In additional, we can tell that Dickinson really appreciates the beauty of the nature by the terms: "heaven", "harmony". Lastly, she used "her" instead of "it", to describe the nature in the last sentence. This method of personification to gives nature(of her perspective) a basic characteristic and provides a more vivid scene.

New perspective

  The show was a great demonstration of the book, it not only provides audience a visual perspective but also includes a few elements that were not fully expressed in the novel.

  The light effects that were used were definitely the highlights of the play and they made the performance brilliant. The performance really utilizes every inch of the stage, patterns and colors were projected all over it. One of the first scene that amazes the audience could absolutely be the one at the beginning where Christopher lied down, and massive amount of letters and patterns exploded out of his mind. I was shocked by this effect because there were so many things jumped out of the stage. Christopher had been always a special kid, who had a lot of crazy thoughts in his mind but couldn't express properly. It was not just because that he was struggling with autism but his idea could not be accepted by most of the people. When I was watching the play, I really wanted to stand out for Christopher and speak for him. And the moment when his inside world exploded, I actually felt released. Another great example of light effect could be the one, where he walked in the subway station. It would be quite boring if he just walks in directions with random background. But the show had a sensational performance on that scene with the help of light effect. 

Christopher walked in red lighted path whereas the rest of the stage was in dark. The path occurred  in the order of what narrator said. It was clearer to the audience and everyone was able to focus on Christopher's movement. Lastly, my favorite part of the play was the one where Christopher floats in the "Universe" and a few actors lifted him up. The scene was so touching. Christopher was "bullied" by everyone, things had never turned out good for him. But the moment when he soars in his own world, the world could see how amazing this autistic child can be, and how beautiful his inside world looks. 

  Overall, the performance really gave me a new perspective to those that are struggling the most, and aren't able to express themselves. I wish all autistic children can be like Christopher, being consistent in their goals and never give up on life. I realized that those children could really used the support from their families and loved ones. It's what keep them going and live a "special" normal life.

Staging Design

In my staging, the backdrop is the most important piece of work, and it is an illustration of the whole story's background. Like what the backdrop is shown, the whale is on the top, representing the village's spirit and guide their lives. Under the whale, there are two Maori warriors. They meet each other by the Maori's traditional greeting - hongi. The two warriors represent the union of the villagers and how they stay together and love each other under he whale(tradition, religion)'s guide. On the left side, the pattern represent the tradition of Maori's. And on the right side, there's an airplane and a tree on the beach which represent the view of New Zealand and the modern part of the world. The two sides make a contrast and show the conflict of tradition and modernization. For the staging part, I select the last scene. As what my proposal stated, the whale will show up in the form of human. And in the last scene, Kahu will be having conversations with the old whale in blue light which shows that  they are in the ocean world. The rest of the stage are performed in darker light.

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.

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.