Enjoy and Fun

This final project is a fun project which we use what we learned through the year to create our own performance, and so far l have been enjoying this. In our group we choose a book called Live As We Knew it which is a sad story, but it also contains some precious and touching moments which gives readers a great experience. In our group, we want to do the same thing, so we can delivery touching and sad story to the audience. In order to do that, we have to switch the time lines to show the difference of characters and environment. However, when we were staging this story, we faced some problems, such as showing the timeline, distinguish the characters and stage changing.

One of our main focus is on the different timelines, and we are switching them around, so it was so hard to tell when was when in our first draft. I think it's hard to tell not only because we didn't have the lighting effects, but also because we didn't have a good way to tell the exact time we were at. For example, when we were trying to compare the characters changing from happy to a very intense state, we did not give a clear sign that these two scene happened in two different time period and situation. The result we got was that these two scene made absolute no scene which was so bad for people never know this story before. To solve this problem, we need to have to make it clear that we are presenting a scene from what time and situation. We can add dialogue to tell the audience or we can have sign board to tell the time. Even more, we can use the light and costumes to show the weather outside.

Another thing I realized is that my character Johnny’s development was not done because I should be a 13 years old boy, and I have a brother Matt who is already in college. However, when we staged this, I looked much bigger than Michael which caused that audience cannot tell who is bigger brother. I think that we need to add more movements to show the relationship, such as touching my head to comfort me or having a conversation about how he suggest what I should do.The last problem would be our scene changes which is a hot mass. We were just randomly putting props and moving furnitures, and it looked so bad. I suggest that we should have a list for every scene changes, so only one person need to take care one thing.

I feel like we were dong well with lines and ques, but we still need to project more. So far, we are in a good state, and we just need to change few things then we will be good to go. I have to say that this is the best project we have through the whole year because we don’t have to stick to the IB system, so we have much more freedom to chose what we truly want to do and perform. I cannot wait to see our final production, and I wish everyone can have a great summer.