Me, Nancy, and
Johnny are in the same group acting the play, which is the combination of the
Children of the Sea and Caroline’s wedding. Through our play, as the scenario
producer, I want to show conflict between parents
and children. Especially in the book Caroline and her mom grow up in different
culture and got different level of education which makes their gap and conflict
fiercer. When making up the senior, I choose these two chapters from the book
is because both of them contains conflict, and conflict is what makes a good
play. With conflict, the whole play would have an up and down plot. Another
reason is that these two chapters are really close to student’s life: the
Children of the Sea is about relation between lovers and parents, and Caroline’s
wedding is about cultural differences and generation gap. Many of children
experienced that our parents may rest their own dream upon us and hope we
could obey all rules they set. But some time they forget that we are all individual.
From our play, audiences can find out that life is a loop. Parents’ acts not
only affect their children, the acts will also be virtually passed down to
their grandchildren on day. To end this vicious cycle, one of the parent or the
children has to compromise. In the play, Caroline’s mom recalls her old
days when her father separated her and her lover, then force her to merry
another man. She realize she is now being the same kind of person as her father
used to be. So Caroline’s mom sacrifices, understands her daughter and starts to
accept Caroline’s fiancé . We expect this play could not only show conflict
between immigrant parent and child, but also the cycle of fate.
Acting out is a really hard process. We
need to prepare for the props, the staging, the lights, and the background
music. However, these are all supplements. The main essence of a play is still
the acting. My Character is Caroline’s mom in Caroline’s wedding. At the same time, I am also playing the
role of the girl in Children of the sea. To show the difference, I not only
changed my costume, but actually I didn’t because the time limitation, I also
considered about the two characters’ personalities and thought about what I
want to show to the audiences through these two characters. Caroline’s mom is a really traditional Haitian woman who
faithfully believe that Haitian women should marry a Haitian men. She also
believes that women in a family should serve for her husband and her husband
should be the man of the family. Growing up in Haiti is not the only reason for
her to be such a traditional Haitian woman: she is also affect by her own
marriage and her parents. In the flash back part, which is Caroline’s mom’s day
dream, it will tell audiences that what CM’s life used to be like in
Haiti. Her parents forced her to marry a guy who she never had a relationship
before. This act of her parents affects her view of marriage, which become a reason
why she is so radical on the problem of Eric is not a Haitian. Also, she lost her first lover, her husband, and her parents. There
is no other family member of her who lives in America misses Haiti as much as
she does. Her lonely and traditional heritage idea makes her really want to put
her own believe on Caroline. To show the difference between old CM and young CM, I used different posture
to distinguish them. For old CM, I was a little bit slouch and stoop, used a relatively low
voice to speak. Since she is already old, I want to show her
tiredness and dissatisfied through scuff and make sound by the friction between
the bowl and the spoon. The emotion CM has in the first and the last scene is
very different. In the first scene, CM wants to express her anger and dissatisfied to her
daughter, her
daughter’s
fiancé, and
their wedding. She knows there is nothing can be changed, but she just can’t stop grumble. After she
and her daughter quarreled, she was tired and aimless. In the last scene, Caroline and CM’s conflict has resolved, so CM is happy and
released. In contrast, the girl in Children of the Sea, who is young CM, is only 17 years old.
She is immature and full of expect to romantic love. She is at adolescence, which makes her
extremely rebellious. For everything her parents tells her, CM is only going to do
the opposite. The harder her parents try to separate the girl and the boy, the deeper she loves
him. The boy is her first boyfriend, which explains why she is so brave and impulsive. When
the boy gets on the boat to Miami, her and the whole country were poor. To show this
feature, I was
going wore a ripped dress, tied a scarf over my head and bare foot. But the back
stage was really dark that I couldn’t remember where I putted my scarf. Even though
she is poor, the
girl is healthy and positive. I tried show it by standing straight, walk normally, and have dramatic action
when speaking. I am still regret about my part of the girl. Because I didn’t
have many lines in that scene and I was anxious, I forgot some of my lines and
had no posture to do. I didn’t show my braveness for love at all. In fact I was
more like a quiet maid who serves for the boy.
