We Tell The Story

“Two different worlds, never meant to meet!” I still cannot believe that this show is over. “Once On This Island” is the first musical play I ever did, and I still don't believe I did. Since I have memories about my singing, my mom has been telling how bad I am at singing because I always get the wrong note. However, I truly enjoyed every singing and dancing rehearsals, and I love all the people in this play. I learned so many things on singing and got to know so many people after we tell the story! Anyway, I'm so glad that I improved a lot through this play and I will keep working hard in the future. Now let me tell the story!

Once there is a boy called John, and he is really scared to sing, so he decided to do wrestling for his winter afternoon activity. However, there was some God’s power guided this boy into the theater by cancling the wrestling program in the winter. The story began in the music room. This was the first time this boy went to the music room, and he did terrible on his first singing rehearsal, but he didn't felt bad and he laughed because it was too funny that seeing James’s suffered face. His long journey began, his singing improved a lot because Ms. DiGiacomo and Mr. Trier asked him to go to CATS, then James’s “torture” began. However, after two weeks this James, Ryan and this boy started to have their own karaoke in VdP. Later and later he was getting better. 

Except the singing rehearsal, the dancing rehearsal is also very interesting because I never danced before, so when the first time we ran the whole “We Dance” I felt so happy because I could actually dance while I'm singing on stage. And I feel much easier when I memorize the lines in the musical play than straight play even though it seemed hard to memorize all the dance movements and songs, but it actually helps you do better because it makes a string connection between songs and dances. However, there is another problem I relarized in the play that it is so hard to put our emotion in the musical play than the straight play because when we focusing on the rhythm, lyrics and movements it feels extremely hard to show our emotion to the audience. For example, I always sing “Pray” in a very nice way in the rehearsal, but I should do it with a very intense emotion. I am glad I didn't have to do it in the actual play because until now I still sing “Now the sky is turing dark” as it is a beautiful scene. 

After all, I want to say that musical play is such a new and special experience and feeling for me, and I like it because now I cannot stop singing now! I am looking forward to work on more next year. At the end I want to thank all the cast and crew members who gave this great show, and I also want to thank teachers who didn't give up on me even I was doing wrong in almost every single rehearsal. Of cause, I want to thank Ms. Guarino who guided me in this world I enjoy. We Tell The Story!!!

Oral first draft

My Love My Love or The Peasant Girl is a love story between a peasant girl called Ti Moune who is saved by four gods and a wealthy man called Daniel Beauxhommethey are Agwe, Asaka, . Ti Moune saves Daniel’s life from a car accident, and she falls in love with him. However, it turned into a tragedy at the end of the story because there is a character called Anderea who is a wealthy girl who knew Daniel since he was in France. Anderea shows in front of Daniel’s face while he and Ti Moune start to livetogether, but Daniel decided to leave Ti Moune alone and get married with Anderea. Finally, Ti Moune dies in front of Daniel’s house, and he asks people throw her body in the garbage can. I'm so interested in how the Gods influence Ti Moune and the relationship between Daniel, Ti Moune and Andrea.

Our group’s idea is based on Ti Moune’s imaginary and realistic world, so we have Dr. Goodman and Andrea who are Daniel and Andrea in the book, and in our scene they represent the realistic world, and four gods represent the imagination of Ti Moune. In our script, Dr. Goodman saves Ti Moune’s life while she lost her memories in a car accident and she thinks that Dr. Goodman and she are meant to be together. However, he has a fiance in france which is Andrea. We also have four Gods in one character to represent the imagination who has a mutipul personalities disorder, so our story is telling by these two worlds.

When we are staging this short play, we used a coach in the center stage for Ti Moune. Then we put scene which happen in the real world on stage right and imagination on the other side. We used short black out for the scene changing from the realistic to the imagination. I think the most chanllenge part of our performance is the Gods character becuase one actor has to play four differnt character in the same time. I have to say that our grop mate did a great job on developing the Gods character. We also accoplish our goal of analysis more about Ti Moune’s imaginary worlds and real world by showing the different reaction. For example, when the god told Ti Moune “But what? There is no debate they must be together”(G.Er), but when Ti Moune tells Dr. Goodman that she loves him, he decided to leave. All these difference break her dream in pieces.

I played Dr.Goodman in our  group, and I think I did well on this character. At the begining, I was just a normal doctor who cares about his patients, but as Ti Moune showed her love to me I started to adopt myself and started liking her. However, when Andrea showed up, I left Ti Moune alone and go away with Andrea. I didn’t know how to build this charccter because it is so different from the book, but I figuared it out because I think as a doctor I should be more caring my patients, and this caring can cause the misunderstanding. This is also why I act to like Ti Moune at one point.

I like what we did in the class because everyone worked hard on the characters, staging and costumes. There is one thing we can improve is that we can use more light effect to make each god character more visible. I truly enjoyed this project because when we are staging our own work we understand more characters and the deep meaning of the literary work.

Hello Ti Moune!? Whoops...

We have been working on this project for two weeks, and think it is going pretty well. I truly enjoy working with Wiebke and Bryn because they are so talented and creative. Our group’s idea is based on Ti Moune’s imaginary and realistic world, so we have these two world scene keep switching around and focusing on how characters in different world react. Dinel who is also Dr. Goodman in our scene represents the realistic world, and four gods represent the imagination of Ti Moune. We also have a short scene between Andrea and Dinel to show how different and cruel the real world is, and it leads the death of Ti Moune at the end of the story. Through this project, we have discovered our own understanding of My Love My Love, and we are creating our performance to show our ideas!

I think our ideas about the story is both similar and different from the original book. It is similar because we used the relationship between Ti Miune, Dinel and Andrea, and we make gods to be her imagination person who help her. We choose this way because the way Dinel and Andrea act is extremely different from what Ti Moune thinks which cause the dramatic moment when Dinel tells Ti Moune that he will marry Andrea. I also feels it works super well when Ti Moune listen to gods and reacts very excited, then she gets upsets when she faces to the truth. Our story is different from story because in our story Dinel saved Ti Miune, and we set the situation when Ti Moune believes in that they are meant to be together while Dinel doesn't know what she is talking about at all. I like this setting because it make the story even more dramatic, and it shows how silly and hopeless Ti Moune is.

I am play Dinel’s role in this project, and Wiebke is Ti Moune and Bryn is four gods and Andrea. We are best friends so we know each other and we are comfortable working with each other which helps us a lot on develope our scene. The chemistry between us gives us more abilities to act and add more details. For example, when we are building the relationship between Dinel and Andrea we have to do more movements that couples do, such as holding hans. Because we are so comfortable to work together we are able to show the relation between these two characters, and that makes Ti Moune’s situation looks even worse.

I am so happy about that I can work with Bryn and Wiebke because I know them well and they are so good at acting and creating scenes. I am looking forward to work on more so we can have our final draft. We still need more work on our costumes and some small props. Even though, we want to have two beds we cannot make it happen, so we use a couch, two chairs and a table for setting. We also need to work on pacing more because so far we can barely make 10 to 12 minutes which is too less. Anyway, I have been enjoying doing this project, and I hope it will be our best project!