Oral Revision

1. Story chosen

• Caroline's Wedding
• Why: It shows a lot of important themes: Love, Family Struggle, and Identity
• Why appeal: It shows the struggles for people to get their own identity. 
• Why good piece: dinner scene highlights the family struggle; monologues highlights the identity issue. 

2. Literary analysis of Story

• Themes: Love; Identity; family struggle
• Character: Eric
• Conflict: Eric & Mom (dinner scene, Eric's monologues as a result)
• Historical context: Eric's identity is Bahamian. (In Eric's monologue mentioning horrible armed  robbery)
• Relationship: Eric & Caroline (Couple); Eric & Mom (protagonist vs. antagonist)
• Setting: Eric's monologue (outside of the house) -> showing the separation

3. Your adaptation

• Vision for the piece: thoroughly; identify the themes well
• What you did: Blocking and staging - how to best present and highlight those themes, emotion, and characteristics(could mention the triangles(periactoids) that separate Mom and Eric). Eric's characteristics: weak (coward) at first; getting stronger at the end. In order to show it, dinner scene: low down heads, talk quietly. Monologue: voice is loud. Show to audience: how hard for foreigners to integrate into America; the effort foreigners made.

4. Performance

Talking about previous mistakes

in table scene: 

• lower my head (movement)
• talk quietly
• scared of looking at mom (facial expression)
• take off Caroline's coat (since she is disabled); pull the chair for her

in monologue scene:

• voice is louder 
• at first look at mom, but later on look at the camera, showing that I am talking to myself
• gazing at the bunny, showing that I am talking to myself at that time

5. Evaluation

I think I did a great job on some details, like take off the coat. My voice is also clear and loud. But I do not think I show Eric's emotion well. Eric is a person who desires to get Mom's permission, but I do not think I show this. Also, from the performance I did not show the love between Eric and Caroline well.

6. What you could have improved

Did well:

• voice is clear
• details in movement
• facial expression

Need to improve:

• Add more lines to describe the relationship between Eric and Caroline
• Add more movements so that the monologue will be more interesting

7. What you learn

• Background of Haiti
• How culture differences matter
• how hard it is for foreigners to integrate into another country
• How do props like periactoids improve the play 

What have done: 

Memorizing the lines, tries to find the body movements that fits the lines, and tries to appeal the emotion. Before during first performance, it sounds like I was reading the lines, it does not show any emotion. Therefore the next performance I add some body movements(Dinner scene - Lower head; Eric’s monologue - face to the audience)

Use of music: grandiose music - Eric's monologue (express the feeling)

Analysis of character Eric: Comparison

• personality in dinner scene
• personality in monologue

Use of props:

• Triangle in monologue - showing separation
• Teddy bear - connection between Eric and Caroline; cause of the conflict

Oral Presentation

1. Story chosen

• Caroline's Wedding
• Why: It shows a lot of important themes: Love, Family Struggle, and Identity
• Why appeal: It shows the struggles for people to get their own identity. 
• Why good piece: dinner scene highlights the family struggle; monologues highlights the identity issue. 

2. Literary analysis of Story

• Themes: Love; Identity; family struggle
• Character: Eric
• Conflict: Eric & Mom (dinner scene, Eric's monologues as a result)
• Historical context: Eric's identity is Bahamian. (In Eric's monologue mentioning horrible armed  robbery)
• Relationship: Eric & Caroline (Couple); Eric & Mom (protagonist vs. antagonist)
• Setting: Eric's monologue (outside of the house) -> showing the separation

3. Your adaptation

• Vision for the piece: thoroughly; identify the themes well
• What you did: Blocking and staging - how to best present and highlight those themes, emotion, and characteristics(could mention the triangles(periactoids) that separate Mom and Eric). Eric's characteristics: weak (coward) at first; getting stronger at the end. In order to show it, dinner scene: low down heads, talk quietly. Monologue: voice is loud. Come up the idea of teddy bear. (As a connection between Caroline and Eric). Show to audience: how hard for foreigners to integrate into America; the effort foreigners made.

4. Performance

Talking about previous mistakes

in table scene: 

• lower my head (movement)
• talk quietly
• scared of looking at mom (facial expression)
• take off Caroline's coat (since she is disabled); pull the chair for her

in monologue scene:

• voice is louder 
• at first look at mom, but later on look at the camera, showing that I am talking to myself
• gazing at the bunny, showing that I am talking to myself at that time

5. Evaluation

I think I did a great job on some details, like take off the coat. My voice is also clear and loud. But I do not think I show Eric's emotion well. Eric is a person who desires to get Mom's permission, but I do not think I show this. Also, from the performance I did not show the love between Eric and Caroline well.

6. What you could have improved

Did well:

• voice is clear
• details in movement
• facial expression

Need to improve:

• Add more lines to describe the relationship between Eric and Caroline
• Add more movements so that the monologue will be more interesting

7. What you learn

• Background of Haiti
• How culture differences matter
• how hard it is for foreigners to integrate into another country
• How do props like periactoids improve the play 

Reflection on group's performance

Overall, I think we did a good job. When I watch the video recording, I can hear everyone's voice clearly, and also there is no pause or mistake made in the performance. Talking about Grace, she is the main character Caroline. She did a really good job at the scene between Caroline and her mom. When she ignored her mom, her mom then dragged her teddy bear and tore it into pieces. Because of this, Grace shouted at her mom with a really loud voice. From her voice, I can hear the anger and despair. Talking about David Dai, he acts as Caroline's mom in the play. During the dinner scene, Mom needs to show that she abhors American culture and she refuses her daughter to marry with Eric. David just made a perfect performance on this. When he heard that Caroline was talking about the "growing horns", he replied: "Horns? You think you are so American." His voice and tone just perfectly presents the hates to American culture. I also did a good job on acting Eric. Eric supposes to be a subservient person at first. During the dinner scene, my voice is loud and enrich with happiness when I talk to Caroline. But when mom comes closer and talks to us, my voice get lower and I always look down in order to prevent the eye contact with her. By those small details, I show that Eric is a subservient character. Eric is a weak character at first, but later on he changes. During Eric's monologue, Eric wants to talk with Caroline's mom but mom pushes him away. Then, Eric has a monologue outside of mom's house. From my voice, I show how perplex Eric is when he first came to US. But later on when I said that Eric met Caroline and became friend, my pitch got really high in order to show that I am glad to meet Caroline. Even though we have lots of strength, there are some parts that still need to be revised. For example, during the dinner scene, I helped Caroline to take off her coat, but I forgot to take off mine. Another weakness is that I do not have enough body movements. During the dinner scene, what I can do is to look down and look at the soup that Mom gives it to me. I do not think this is enough, Eric should have more details to show his characteristics. Also in Eric's monologue, I was standing there and finishing my monologue. It is good that I look at mom at first and then camera, showing that I start to talk to myself, but I do not have enough movements. I was just standing there, and nothing else I can do. In order to show that Eric is glad that he can meet Caroline, I think I should walk around the stage when I talk about how hard it is for me to survive in US, and stop and look at the camera when I talk about Caroline. Or I need to have some props to help me out so that the monologue will not be tedious.