25 Pictures

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1esVljNriYq1E3sqatcUy1_hxcWGoW2JVD8_SpZFvlx0/edit?usp=drivesdk

Chapters 3-5 Notes

Chapter 3-

- The chapter begins with Desiree discovering the car accident.
- at first she does not know what it is and she is scared but then she gets excited because its a car.
- she calls for help but people were not around untill later.
- she discovers that it is a man who is hurt badly.
- she really wants to help him.
- then other peasants show up and they help get the man out of the car.
- Desiree convinces the people that the gods sent the man for her to take care of so they have him sleep in Desiree's house.

Chapter 4-

- Julian and M. Bienaime went out of town to try to find out who this man was and to tell his family where he was.
- While they do this Desiree continues to take care of the man.
- she feels this connection to him and even though she does not know his name, she loves him and is very loyal to him when other people tell her that she is dying and that it is not worth it to take care of him.
- then there is a huge storm that takes place.
- the storm last for about 4 or 5 days and it completely wipes out the village.

Chapter 5-

- after the storm is over, there is a helicopter that comes to pick up the man.
- his father comes out and thanks the people for taking care of his son and they leave just like that.
- Desiree is heartbroken by this because she felt a connection to the man.
- the man's name is Daniel Beauxhomme.
- about a week later Julian arrives back at the village.

Read first two chapters of MLML -- post notes about the setting, characters and plot on your blog

- setting is on sn island where it is separated between the rich and the poor. 

- battles between the gods effect the people on the islands.

- the gods used to get along and provide for the people. 

- First character named is Monsieur Bienconnu. He is older and telling a story.

- The other characters are Mama Euralie and Julian.
- rain is very important because if there is too little then the drought will continue but too much will wash everything away.
- two gods are Agwe and Asaka.
- peasant girl does a lot of day dreaming.

Winter Play Review

The title of the play that I watched was the musical Footlose. I saw it on Saturday March 2nd in the Black Box Theatre.

The plot of the play is that there is a teenager named Ren who moved from Chicago to this little town called Boumont. Ren is a rebel type of character and he does not like to follow the rules. One of the things that he loves doing in dancing. It is something that he loves to do. However, one of the laws I the town is that dancing is not allowed because of an accident that happened year ago. The general plot is that Ren comes to this town and revolts against the reverend of the church to allow dancing again. There is a lot of conflict between Ren and the reverend. By the end of the play the law is changed and dancing is allowed again.

The stage was pretty open throughout the play. There were a lot of scenes where at least half of the stage was empty such as in the church scenes, the dinner scenes and the train track scenes. The costumes were pretty good throughout the performance. It was easy to tell that Ren was from a modern area while everyone else looked like they lived in the country side.  This was shown through the costumes that the characters wore. The characters that were highlighted as the most important was Ren, Shaw, and Ariel. This was done by them always being in the center of the stage and everybody always talking to them or about these characters. Some characters that were similar to each other were Ren and Ariel because they both want to be adventurous. Two characters that are different are the reverend and Chuck because Chuck is a person who likes to do bad things whereas the Reverend is an upstanding preacher in the church.

My favorite actor was Nan. She was the character of Chuck. She did a great job of being the bad guy in the play. She talked with attitude and her presence was always felt on the stage.

I really enjoyed the play. I felt like it was well put together and all of the performers did a great job. I really liked the group songs and dance and I also liked the one on one character interactions.

Oral Presentation rough draft

• Mix of a Wall of Fire Rising and Night Women. Performed in a Black Box.
• These two stories appealed to me because I felt like they were connected to each other. As the reader I assumed that the two stories were connected to each other because after a wall of fire rising, we do not know what happens to the family after Guy dies. All we know is that it is just Lili and Little Guy left to live by themselves. In Night women, the family consists of just the mother and her son who live in poverty. Because of these correlations between the two stories we can assume that Lili is the Night Women and Little Guy is the son.
• A Wall of Fire rising was my favorite story in the book because there was so much going on within the family.
• I felt like I could relate to Guy in the story because he wanted to be something great in his life and he expressed himself wanting to be great with the hot air balloon. He also wants to provide for his family but cant because he is low on the list. Understanding this allowed for me to perform the role of Little Guy better because I wanted to show that Little Guy wanted to provide for his mother and himself the way that his father tried to.
• I also felt like I could relate to Little Guy because he wants to be something great as well.
• Little Guy is in school and he is memorizing his lines throughout the story, so at the end when his father dies, he is able to remember them and says them over his fathers dead body.
• In night women, the mother wants to protect her son from the world and the truth about herself. She is ashamed but she is doing the job because it is the only way to provide for her son. This is an important relationship in the book and in our performance because we mix the two stories together. So the themes that really stood out to us was hopelessness because of what happebed to guy and the importance of the relationships between mother and son as well as father and son.
• There is a good amount of conflict in both Night women and a wall of fire rising internally in each character and also between the characters.
• This was something I felt was important to understand for our performance.
• For our adaptation we mixed the two stories together.
• We assumed that Lili from a Wall of Fire Rising was the prostitute in the story Night Women. We also added guy after he died from jumping out of the hot air balloon, and an angel that advises him throughout the performance. Little Guy is a little older from when his dad died but is still a child.
• We wanted to show the audience what we thought as a group might have happened after Guy died. We wanted to show the struggle that the family faced because he left them without anything.
• We wanted to show the poverty that the family has by laying on an empty mattress or a blanket on the floor. We also did not wear any socks for the same reason.
• We also wanted to show that people can change for the better. This is shown in our performance when Guy at the beginning of the story wants his son to work at the sugar mill, but by the end wants him to stay in school.
• In order for this to happen he speaks with his wife and is constantly advised by the angel to make the right decision.
• I was Little Guy and in my performance I wanted to show him trying to grow up and become responsible because he knows that his family is struggling. I wanted to help my mother especially when I found out that she was a night women. I felt responsible for the family especially since I had to memorize the lines from Boukman. He always said to be strong and independent, and I took that to heart and tried to express that to the Angel and my mother. However, once I knew that my mother really wanted me to go to school and that is why she was a night women, I realized that it was the right thing to stay in school. That was the strong and independent thing to do.
• I felt like I performed okay. There were times where I was not loud enough so it was hard to hear me. I also felt like I was not showing enough emotion in the first couple of scenes with my mother. I think that I did better in the later scenes with my emotions and my voice on stage.
• I think that we could have improved our performance by working more in the interaction between characters. When I watched the video it still seemed a little but  boring in my scenes.
• I felt like the execution of our lines and stage directions were successful. I think that we did a great job of knowing where we needed to be on stage.
- Some of the things that made our performance better was the staging and the props that were chosen. The prop that had the most meaning to Little Guy was the book that he carries for school. Not only does it represent his schooling but it represents the hope that Lili has for her son. I think that as the performance went on Little Guy understands the importance of this book and gives it back to his mother after she kills herself.
• I learned a lot throughout this performance. I learned how to memorize a large amount of lines. I also learned how to work in a group to come up with a good idea for a performance. I also learned how to set up a scene and lighting for the performance. Last I learned how important it is to stay relaxed in a performance which is very important to do.

350 Words Performance Reflection

Reflect on your group's performance (strengths, weaknesses, etc.) as well as your individual performance. 350 words

I felt like our group did a great job of performing our scene. I feel like everyone did a great job of  memorizing their lines. Everybody did a good job of showing good emotion and knowing where they needed to be on the stage. As I was watching our video one thing that I really liked about our performance was the physical interactions between the characters. This was shown when it was the first scene with Yun and Josh where they were arguing and Yun was poking Josh and Josh hit his hand away. This was incorporated into the performance because we realized that a good way to show a characters emotion was by physical contact. I also did the same thing that Josh did in my first scene with Yun where I was given the two options on if I should work at the sugar mill or go to school. One of the strengths that I felt our group had was chemistry on stage. When we were performing it was easy to show emotions of angry or sad or happy because our group did that naturally. One of the weaknesses that I saw from the video was that in scene 8 with Josh, Yun and I. It was very easy to tell that we were trying not to laugh on the stage. We ended up getting through the scene without messing up but because we had to hold back our laughter, it effected our ability to perform our scene. Also, in scene 10 when Helen dies and I go out and find her, Helen was dead but she was moving in the scene. So Helen was supposed to stab herself and die and I was supposed to replace the knife with a flower and the book that Little Guy had for his schooling. During this transfer I messed up and did not put the book in the right place and because of this Helen moved her hand. I would say that it was my fault that she had to move. I really liked the way our performance of ended where Guy and Lili are reunited back together. I felt like this was the perfect ending to show them back together again because they know that their son is safe. Overall I felt like our group did a great job in our performance.

300 Words Progress Evaluation

We have made a lot of progress on our performance since our draft before Christmas Break. We have been able to incorporate more emotion into our performance as well as stage directions and additional props to our oringinal setup. We have been mainly working on the dramatic aspect of our performance because of how dry and uneventful our first draft was. So we have been performing each individual scene between the characters in that scene. This has been helpful for us because in our other performance drafts we have seen great improvement in the emotions of everyone in the group. Another thing that we have been working on is our stage directions. It is important to know where to go on the stage when the characters are performing in the scenes. This gives our performance a more realistic feel rather than the characters just standing in place. Another thing that we have been working on is owning our character. This means that we have been working on thinking the way that our characters would think in the book. My character is Little Guy, so I am working on acting more childish in the begining of the scene but then maturing and becoming older in the later scenes. There are some things that we have to working on. One of those things is line memorization. This is very important for our performance to be successful. If everyone knows their lines, then the performance will flow better, but if somebody does not, then there may time in the performance where nobody is saying anything. It is also important to know when to go on and off the stage. The last thing that we need to work on is to remember to have fun and relax on the stage. I perform better when I am not nervous and having fun. These are some of the things that we have been working on and what we need to improve for our final project.