Reflection on oral

This oral presentation is different from the traditional idea of a presentation. This is a changeable work since students are not allowed to use any other ways to project other than speaking it out. Before I really start to try a practice, I thought this 12-15 minutes must be really long and suffering because I need to keep talking. However, after I really tried once I realize this is not a really long presentation if students are confident and clear about what they are going to say.

When writing the oral presentation, I realize that not only the performing part, but also the thinking part is important as well. I thought a lot about each character that I performed before acting. I also tried to understand what makes Caroline’s mom become such a controlling parent, and I also thought about the girl’s character which she is extremely rebellious because of puberty. So I put my early thoughts into my oral presentation in order to clarify my reason to combine Children of the Sea and Caroline’s wedding together.

As Ms.Guarino said: the more practice, the better you can do. I didn’t realize that I am going do my final version of oral presentation until yesterday, and I started on my notes since this morning. Since I didn’t manage my time properly, I didn’t get much time to practice, which makes me really nervous when doing the final one. I had 5 pages of notes, and when I reach the end of my third page, I used about 8 minutes during practicing. But I only used 7 minutes when doing the final. Since I was too anxious, I spoke really fast and my voice was trembling. I made lots of grammar mistakes and had no logical when talking. If I get a chance to redo it, I will definitely do more practice and be well prepared for it.

Oral Presentation draft

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.

School of Rock Review

I have to say this is the best musical I have ever watched. It has a great flow of the plot with ups and downs. Besides, audiences can clearly understand why the name of this musical is School of Rok. Although its plot is just like other teenager movie that I have watched, but through Cheshire Academy’s students’ acting, this is a great one.

One thing that really surprised me is the background. There are totally three backgrounds: Lexi’s house, the classroom, and the white wall. This is the first time for me to see that back ground can also be changed when scene changes. Before watching this amazing musical, I was still wondering why this time no backstage student draws the wall. The School of Rock uses a triangular prism, which each side represent a different scene. If the play uses the traditional way, which is to separates the whole stage into three parts, the space for actors to stand would be much smaller, and some audience sitting on the edge of the auditorium may not able to watch the show. That is the reason why I think the triangular prism is a really creative idea.

On the way to black box, I kept thinking what this musical is going to be like. Last year’s musical is kind of complicate. There were four Gods, four parents, and two main characters.  However, School of Rock only has one main character. It shows that conflicts between Lexi and her dream, her friends, her colleagues, and her students. A coincidence makes people who have rock dream in their heart gather together. The students in School of Rock remind me of students in Cheshire Academy. Our parents have great expect of us. They pay more than 60,000 dollars a year and even send their kids to study in another country. However, for some of them, they are just putting their unfinished dream on their kids. For the character Julia acts, her parents want her to go to study in the school that they think is best for her. Even it ends with a good ending, her parents didn’t care about how Julia feels. She is like a robot controlled by her parents rather than a kid who follows her own heart. Another two roles who I really like about is Sam and John Jiang’s character. In the part before Sam sits and talk with Lexi, she act just like what she says, a bitch. But, when she finally opens her heart, you will realize there is also a rock dream in this extremely strict teacher. So does John. On the one side he wants to be with his girlfriend. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to give up his rock dream. John, Sam, Lexi, and all those students all have rock dreams, but the reality makes them to give up. Because this is just a musical, everyone can has a good ending. However, if all these things happen in reality, there would be no thoughtful parents, no generous police officer, and no Lexi. Many people had rock dreams, but only few of them really achieved. This is also a reason why I like musical. It can show us the good side of humanity, and make us forget about the pressure we have.

Discuss your progress

It has been three weeks since scenario was decided. Unlike other groups project, the scenario of our play was made up by me and Nancy together. So far, our group had faced many difficulties and made many changes to our scenes. Things didn’t happened as what we thought, and many were hard to achieve. We planned to have a bed and a sofa, but they are too heavy to move ,and we are not able to change the scene in a short time. One of the biggest difficulties is that  we decided to make Caroline read her mom dairy while her mom is dreaming about the diary. If our play was in a movie adaptation that would be so much easier to show that this is such a coincidence for both of them thinking about the same matter. As a result, we asked for Ms. Guarino’s advice and changed Caroline’s mom’s part from sleeping at night to daydreaming. Therefore, if Caroline and her mom are saying the same lines: “Today you left. I stood at the wharf, watching you left. That figure on boat now is gone,” as we do in Scene Two, audiences can clearly understand that they are both thinking about the good old days. Another thing is that the way we write is different from the way we speak. When we were writing scripts, the words were in a serious writing expression. However, people, especially between parents and child, speak more casually. In these three weeks, we tried our best to complete our scenes and make it better.

By reading other students’ feedback, here are some main problems. The biggest one is that all of us speaks too fast. We are not totally familiar with our scripts and didn’t combine our emotion with the words. This problem makes our acting only has less than 10 minutes. Even if we speak slower and add in the time to change scene, we will probably only have 12 minutes. To fix this problem, we need to add more lines. For example, Caroline’s mom and her daughter could talk more in the last scene when they solve the conflict. I personally think the last scene ends up too fast. We used more than half of the acting to show and explain their conflict, but we solve the conflict in only 13 sentences. Another problem is that we were too focus on our own acting and line which make the reaction with other characters’ words less. When we were acting, we had enough staging except in Scene Three. But we were lack of body language, which is also a really important part to express emotion and make the acting more vivid. The biggest problem for me is that I need to show two character in different age: one is 17, the other is 50. I have never observed how a 50 years old lady would talk to their children, and how they would sit and stand. Except using different costume to show the age difference, I need to learn from the actor in Warrior Don’t Cry who used different postures and different body languages to show the difference by using limited props.

list of costumes, props, lighting and sound cues.

Props:

l   Scene One: takes place in living room---a wardrobe, a table, an umbrella on the table, a bowl, a spoon, a cooking pot, and a table lamp.

l   Scene Two: takes place in both living room and bedroom--- a wardrobe, a coffee table, and a table lamp.

l   Scene Three: takes place at a wharf in Haiti---An umbrella.

l   Scene Four: takes place in the living room---a wardrobe, a table, and a table lamp.

Costumes:

l   Scene One+Two: Caroline wears a long-sleeve shirt and sweatpants. Caroline’s mom wears a nightgown.

l   Scene Three: The girl (Caroline’s mom) wears a ripped dress, ties a scarf over her head, and bare foot. The boy wears ripped jeans and a white shirt on top.

l  Scene Four: Caroline wears a long white dress (wedding dress). Caroline’s mom wears a women’s formal dressing.

Stage models+ description of set

Staging:

Props:

l   Scene One: takes place in living room---a wardrobe, a table, an umbrella on the table, a bowl, a spoon, a cooking pot, and a table lamp.

l   Scene Two: takes place in both living room and bedroom--- a wardrobe, a coffee table, and a table lamp.

l   Scene Three: takes place at a wharf in Haiti---An umbrella.

l   Scene Four: takes place in the living room---a wardrobe, a small mirror, a coffee table, and a table lamp.

Where to put the furnitures:

Scene One & Four: a table in the center of the stage, with two chairs beside it. A bowl with a spoon inside is placed on the table. Besides the bowl is a cooking pot that used to contain bone soup. The umbrella is placed beside it, and a table lamp is on it.

Scene Two: Split the whole stage into two areas. The left stage region is the living room, whereas the opposite side is the mother’s bedroom. There is only a chair in the living room. In the bedroom, there is a wardrobe being placed on the right stage.

Scene Three: Empty (The boy enters with an umbrella).