In class writing

There is only one stanza in this poem, it I think we can break it down to three parts to read, ""nature" is what we see", "nature is what we hear" and "nature is what we know". I feel the emotion is enjoyable and peaceful. It keeps tell beautiful things in the nature, and I think she is trying to make connection to all the nature things to our senses. It says the nature is heaven, harmony and simple which gives a image with all the goals people are seeking.

I feel the most important massage she is sending to us is we should paying attention to all these beautiful things around us which we ignored before. The thing we can see such as the afternoon which represents the setting sun. Things we can hear such as the sea, peaceful and beautiful. AAlso the thing we know about nature and there is no art to say. All these things are around us, but we didn't pay attention top them, and that's we didn't see heaven, hear harmony, know the simplicity. The simplicity of nature is the thing we know but we can't tell we can only feel his our senses to gather the information. 

In class writing

1. Fig tree: homesickness. it is the missing of home and culture in the poem. It is father's belief and all other people's belief in Arabic. "plucking his fruits like ripe tokens, emblems, assurance of a world that was always his own."

2. Coffee: expressing culture. It represent who these people are and what they stand for. "a motion of faith. There is this,

and there is more."

3. Grandmother: seize the loss missing for past. It is the person who author wants yo meet again, and it represent all the people's will to meet others who had pasted away. "Where we live in the world is never one place."

Stage

I want to have stories about Kahu on the stage right and Father on stage Left. The narrator will be in the center stage to tell each side's story then each side will need to act out to show the story when one of them is on the other one will be in the dark. We might need some spot lights to focus on different parts. Koro is the only character show on the both sides. He will enter through the purple door. At one point Kahu will speak to the other side and Father will also do it. And they will speak after each other, so it sounds like they are having a conversation but they don't know who they are talking to, but they can hear each other. And the clam max would be when Father hand the stone to the daughter, and it show the connection between the Past and Future. Also it prove that anyone can the leader.

Costume: Koro with white wig in Kahu area and without wig in FATHER SCENE

What If...

After I read Whale Rider, I had a interesting question in my head, and the book itself cannot explain which is that what if Kahu is a boy? I am curious what would happen? Does it matter that much if it’s a girl or boy? We all know that in the Maori culture people follow the old story and rules, and this is why when Koro knew that he would have a eldest granddaughter instead of grandson, he felt so dispointed and sad. He believed in that only the eldeast son can take the responsibility to lead the whole Maori people to a brighter future, however this time a girl became the leader. Through the whole book there are so many details have shownd me how much Koro doesn’t like the fact Kahu is a girl which also make the ending so dramatic and even more touched when Koro finally said I love you to Kahu.

I have an idea to have two different story present on one stage. I want to have Kahu’s father story be presented on the stage left and Kahu’s story on stage right. I choose Kahu’s father because of two reasons. The first reason is that he was the eldest son in the family who supposed to be the leader, but he failed even if he was the son. Another reason is that Maori culture also involves the relationship between  past and future which can be shown in the connection between daughter and father. I want to have a narrator in the middle who is a kind of god character who knows both of these two stories, and the narrator will tell the audience what’s happening on each sides and actors will have to act out the scene. I want to show how Koro expect the son to be the leader, and be super straight and serious to him. Then he ignores Kahu completely, but Kahu is the perfect person to be the leader. At the beginning, they just act on their own side, but at the point when Kahu find the stone. I want to change it to Kahu’s father gets the stone first, but then he throw it Kahu. I want to use his giving up to show how he doesn’t like to be the leader. Then I also want to show that he hands the stone to Kahu to represent the connection between daughter and father, past and future, darkness and hope.

I want to put the magical realism in the conversation between Kahu and her father when he was young. I want them to have a conversation base on how Koro treats them the difference and their hope. Kahu wants to be the leader but she doesn’t have the chance while the young father has the chance and ability, but he doesn’t want to, so he hand over the stone to give the duty and hope to the daughter’s hand and let her finish the responsibility. It seemed unreal, but I think this will be a great idea and performance to give people the idea the connection between past and future, also gender doesn’t influence you to be a good leader or not.

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!