Realistic VS. Imaginary

Hello, I’m Dr. Goodman, and I am enjoying to be a part of this great sad story which is named Total Nuts for now. This story is our short play vision of My Love My Love, and our group mainly focus on the fight between Ti Moune’s imaginary world and realistic world. So far we have been working on the lines and some of the staging, but the biggest problem is timing. Then we also need to be more familiar about our blocking because we want to show the relationships between characters, but our pacing is giving us a hard time to show them clearly.

I am Dr. Goodman who represents Dinel in the novel and Goodman is the English meaning of Beauxhomme. Our story is based on a hospital and Ti Moune lost her memories, and she thinks that we are meant to be together. However the truth is that I'm just her doctor and I don't know her at all. I consider this character who is very responsible to his job and patients, so he is being very nice and caring to Ti Moune which cause the misunderstanding between them. I should also react very uncomfortable when Ti Moune does something to show her love to me such as touching my face and holding my hands. We also used the character Andrea in the story who is Dr. Goodman’s fiancée, and they talk about their wedding in front of Ti Moune at the end of the story. 

Because one of our classmate was sick one day, we don't have all of our whole staging and blocking. We need to focus on more blocking because the switching between imagination and real world is very hard to show it clearly with only lights changing. We also can make it clear by staging differently and characters moving differently. More importantly is the character of God because we only have one character who plays four gods. To be honest, it is a extremely difficult to distinguish four different characters in a short time, and it also require the actor to change from different characters in seconds and mutipul times in the roll. Even though I am not playing this role, we still need to work together to help this character to control the pace and being able let the audience understand it well. We are also working on making small changes on scripts, so we could not fully focus on our characters, and it caused that we still need to work on more characters’ building in order to represent each character better and more comprehensive.

I am very excited about this project because this is our own story, so we are able to add more ideas in it and make it more creative. However, we are having a hard time to stage and block our scene, but the idea of four gods in one character and Ti Moune struggling between imaginary and real world are so interesting. And base on this idea we have created so many details between each character to make it happen. I am looking forward to finish our staging and blocking and more important to finish building the character.

Scene Plot

My Love My Love Totally Nuts

• Daniel/Doctor Beauxhomme(Goodman) introduces Ti Moune and car accident→ monologue
• Dr B talks to Ti Moune who thinks that she saved him from the car accident-tries to communicate normally stays calm but eventually gives up and leaves
• As Ti Moune watches Dr B exit, Gods enter and sit on chair next to her→ Ti Moune startled and confused-Gods introduce themselves→ Dr B start entering Gods give the comb
• Dr G Talks to Ti Moune again last her explain her imaginary story understanding at first then impatien leaves
• Ti Moune is confused unsure, Gods appear and crazy God monologue happens, Ti Moune gets hysterical throws the comb God Exit (Bryn suuuupeeeer quick costume change)
• Brief moment of Ti Moune alone all weird
• Dr G enters bringing dinner Andrea enters-cover eyes-spin Dr G ends up with back to Ti Moune Dr G +A Ti Moune tries to get attention from Dr G→ a Dr G +A add it their love want to stay together forever→ Ti Moune breakdrown first scream at Dr G and then at Andrea Dr G gets Andrea out because he is afraid of the crazy person → closes door on her→ Ti Moune depressed (death) they leave and don’t care

THE END

Scene Proposal

Our group decided to stage the novel  My Love, My Love in an insane asylum. We based this idea on Ti Moune’s irrational obsession with Daniel. In our scene, Ti Moune gets into a car accident and loses her memory. She is sent to an insane asylum where she meets Dr. Goodman. Ti Moune imagines the story of her love to Dr. Goodman, who represents Daniel, and tries everything she can to convince him that they are meant to be together. Dr. Goodman tries to resist her advances, yet be a good doctor towards his patient. Ti Moune is helped by her imaginary friend, who is another patient with multible personality disorder. This character will represent the four Gods. When Dr. Goodman’s girlfriend, Andrea, appears unexpectedly, Ti Moune is devestated. She tries to break the two apart but fails, and they leave her heartbroken in her room.

In this scene, Bryn will play the Gods and Andrea, who only appears briefly during the end, Wiebke will play Ti Moune and John will play Dr. Goodman. In our scene we included many small similarities to the book.  Some similarities include a comb, a car accident, the relationship between sane and insane (the rich and the poor), the four Gods, and our biggest theme, Ti Moune’s obsession with Daniel/Dr. Goodman.  While these are similarities, we incorperated them in slighty different ways that still hold true to the storyline of the book. In the our scene, we created an ending that mimicks the novel.  In the novel, Daniel marries Andrea and throws Ti Moune out of the hotel- an action that will ultimately result in her death.  Similarly, our scene ends with Dr. Goodman and Andrea leaving together from Ti Moune’s room.  Therefore, Ti Moune, in both scenarios is “on the other side of the fence.” While in the book she cannot reenter, in our scene, she cannot run after them.