An amazing musical

Once upon the time, there’s a pretty peasant girl who fells in love with a rich white guy. The story has a normal storyline as all fairy tales does. It makes me feel it’s boring. However, with the performance of the great actors in Cheshire Academy Theater group, the musical lived. I have read the book in class and I found I don’t like the story with those annoying and self-righteous characters. Otherwise, it’s a fairy tale that with a realistic ending, which is what I liked about the book. I wasn’t expecting too much on the musical at school due to the boring storyline and how familiar I was with the plots of the whole story. However, I knew I was wrong when I first hear the voice of those actors. Firstly, about the main character, Ti Moune, I thought she’s the most annoying one in the book since she always insists about a love that can never belong to her. However, in the musical, the actress controlled the characteristic well and showed both her keening on Daniel and her other kindness. I didn’t really know how to express my feelings, but I would say Ti Moune in the play seemed lovelier. Also, since our group is practicing on Once on this Island as well, I learned lots of ways to show her insisting from the actress. There are also other parts that made the whole show charming. I remembered the part when both Mama Euralie and Ti Moune was said, “he is dying!” They are caring about different people in the same way. I found that was excellent to show the contrast between Ti Moune and Mama Euralie and kind of tell the audiences how much Ti Moune loved Daniel at that time. Also the journey of Ti Moune didn’t take too long that songs replaced it. The way to use storytellers made the long journey seemed more acceptable. Furthermore, another leading character also did a good job, not just for his charming singings but the emotion he put into the character. There’s another scene when Daniel started to choose his real love of his live. Andrea was elegant and charming while Ti Moune seems young and pretty. I saw his struggling with his mind about someone that he should married or someone he loved. I was wondered if Daniel loved Ti Moune or not when I read the book but I would say he did in the musical. He has shown his character in his understanding to the audience and it made me see those reasons that everything happened. Lastly, the costumes and sound effects also made the musical more attractive and really drove me into the scenes. The changing in the ending might give children a lesson that the reality is cruel somehow but it will still bring beauties in people’s lives. Even though Ti Moune died and I don’t think her spirit was worth to study, I still like the ending that the son of Daniel can fall in love with a peasant girl freely. Overall, there are lot’s of things for me to study from the amazing musical and I wish to see more great plays like this one in the future!

The little red riding Ti Moune - first final draft

Part 1: https://youtu.be/-KLl8cw2uJM Part 2: https://youtu.be/ESV1C0joONI

Oral presentation outline/ first draft

To adapt the story of My Love, My love, or the peasant girl, I transformed the story of Ti Moune, the leading character, into the version of the Little Red Riding Hood. Ti Moune was a peasant girl who travelled to a big city to find her rich life, or find her true love to engage with. I found the circumstances of most fairy tales are similar so and the journeys of the little red riding hood and Ti Moune are similar. It’s because they are both traveling to the place to which they love through a forest and faced many difficulties. The characteristics of both leading characters are similar that they both are firm and brave. Then, the troubles in the journey are also showed by transforming the wolf to Papa Ge. For the end, the story that I showed was different than the fairy tale that Ti Moune finally left lonely in case to tell the purpose of the scene that the reality isn’t a fairy tale so people can’t always dream to be lucky.

Then, I acted as Erzulie and Andrea in this scene. They are different characters. Erzulie was the kind one who led Ti Moune to her true love and helped her a lot in her journey. She was shown as the farmer or hunter who helped the little red riding hood in that story. However, Andrea was different that she was a perfect woman who Ti Moune’s love finally marries with. She didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s actually her, who totally breaks Ti Moune dream. They are two different figures both having an important role in the scene. In the oral, I will tell detailed about how does Andrea’s gorgeous contrast with Ti Moune’s peasant kind and also what kind of moods that Erzulie has to help Ti Moune.

On the other hand, for the staging, I’m going to talk about how the stage looked like. There are two settings in the scene. The first one is forest that there’s a tree in the middle and the wall with plants and flowers surrounded by. The second setting isn’t change a lot that I weren’t that able to change all the setting, but there’s a couch to show that it was in the city and Daniel’s home. Also, I used different props to show how the plots went through. For the scenes when Ti Moune goes on journey, Andrea and Daniel meets, Papa Ge controlled Daniel; there are also different sets of sounds effect to emphasize the emotion. There were blackouts when each of the scene ended.

For my performance, I will talk about it basically based on my scripts and show how I clarify each characters I have and show how I showed the meaning of each of them.

Lastly, for the conclusion, I will talk about why the scene show the cruel of reality and what’s the importance to make sure the difference between the reality and fairy tales. Also, there are lots of things for me to improve based on my emotion expressing and other expressions as well.

First draft

http://youtu.be/CARy9mRnwts

The progress of the scene

As what I have said in the last blog post, our group is telling the story of Ti Moune in the way of The Little Red Riding Hood. It’s interesting to show that there’s always a similar way for fairy tales or stories to tell. However, the similar plot would bring a crueler ending to show people that, real life can never be as beautiful as a fairy tale. Instead of being saved by the hunter, our little Red Riding Hood, which is Ti Moune, will be faded in the shadow and lost her true love, which she believes so. Thus, our scene is showing a real lesson from the reality that people need to weight their selves clearly and the real lives aren’t that beautiful.

During practicing the scene, I think I did well with emotion and giving directions to Ti Moune as being Erzulie. But my problems were obvious as well. Firstly, I’m acting several characters so that I needed to work on clarification. Of course the costumes will tell the difference between those characters, but I shouldn’t rely on that too much. I think it’s important that I can show how Andrea and Erzulie are different in our scene. It’s for sure that I will try to change my hairstyle and costume to show the difference between these two characters and I will also try to change my voice then. I might speak slower when I acted Erzulie and maybe explain more to make the clarification. Also, I can try to act as older people by being the loa of love.

After the clarification problems, I think it’s important to have more actions when I’m acting. For example, I have long scripts at the start of the whole scene that Ti Moune has asked me how to find her love. I should tell her the direction, but it wasn’t so spontaneous in the past rehearsals. I should find a way to do my movements and some body language better. For being Andrea, I need to find a way to be less inflexible when Ti Moune and Daniel are talking to each other. Also, I should work on my blocking that I had block their way sometimes. Otherwise, it’s hard to be the partner of Daniel sometimes that I didn’t really know what should be the attitude of Andrea. Is she really falling in love with the young man, or his money? Should I show love or profit in her facial expression? It’s hard to get this character.

Lastly, even though most of my lines aren’t that long, it’s a problem that I might forget when should I speak. For example, in the rehearsal this afternoon, I forgot there’s another line for Ti Moune to say before mine. It’s not a huge deal, but I’m sure that it will give displeasure to my teammates. Thus, I’m going to spend more time on reviewing my lines.

Overall, I like the way that we act our scenes! Beside the problems, it’s great!

Reality or fairy tale

To decide the topic of the scene work, our group is going to transfer the story of My love, my love, The peasant girl into the form of the little red riding hood, which was the tale that everyone should know when they were young. The two stories would have similar settings that the little red riding hood, who is Ti Moune in this story, would be sent by mama, who is Erzulie, to grandma, who is Daniel. Papa Ge, as the form of the wolf in the tale, will try to stop her from the journey. Due to the plot that the big wolf pretend that he is grandma and try to confuse the little red riding hood, Papa Ge will control Daniel to find another lover as well. However, we wanted to show the reality through the tale story, so there isn’t a hunter who can finally save the little red riding hood and the grandma from the stomach of the wolf.

Even though it was hard to make up a 20 minutes script for four people, our works still went through smoothly. It seemed like the written work is all finished for now and we printed out our scripts and remembered some of them already. I’m pretty sure that there need to be some other lines to fill the requirement of 20 minutes and to connect the plots better. We would work on that during the blocking and rehearsals so that it would be decided by the real situation instead of being an armchair strategist. Since it’s a long-term process, I’m not worrying so much about it.

Besides the script, to get high scores, we need to have proper ability to act those characters well and show the emotion smoothly. It’s pretty hard for me to change the emotion of being a kind mom, who is Erzulie, to a young, pretty lady immediately. I’m trying to work on that always since I have already knew that the problem of being an actress for me is that I was timid sometimes and I couldn’t act as a “girl” normally. During the practice these days, it’s getting better now.

This problem is not just for myself but the whole group. Since one of our group mates was sick, I started to concern if we can finish our tasks on time. This is never an easy task and it’s even harder now. She was the main character of our scene; if we lost her we cannot show the scene unless finding others to replace her. Otherwise, it’s a hard deal for her to control her emotion and to be sad. Meanwhile, I’m not sure about when would she come back so I’m concerned with the blocking that we never did for a whole time before.

Overall, there are lots of problems that are waiting for my group to be fixed. Even though I’m kind of worried, but I believe that the scene will finally be great with our diligence! Can’t wait to work on our meaningful scenes and to do it perfectly!

Blog 13

How would you describe the ending? Use strong adjectives, creative interpretation. Use specific examples from text to back up ideas.

What lesson do you think it is trying to teach to readers? Explain answer.

After reading my love, my love or the peasant girl, I would say it’s a tragic ending I have predicted for a long time. That’s truly sad, and even more tragic than the little mermaid or Romeo and Juliet. For little mermaid, since the man has never loved the little mermaid, he didn’t give him any hope so that’s not that said when the little mermaid lost everything at last. For Romeo and Juliet, at least they have love so that their death is worthy. The peasant girl, Ti Moune, died with nothing: no love, no family nor friends. I would say that she’s too young and too naïve so that this tragic ending would happen to her.

Ti Moune tried hard to start a new life because she thought she’s special. However, all her wishes brought her to be hated by the rich states, “I don’t pay you good money to leave dead peasants in front of my hotel” (p. 168). Daniel’s dad didn’t hate her; he just ignored her because she’s a tiny peasant and they lived in a different world. Even Daniel saw her as a little pet more than a person, who was equal to Daniel. According to the book, when Andrea saw Ti Moune, she said, “Daniel, how lovely. Never have I seen such a beautiful black girl. Can we keep her?” (p.150). Andrea used “keep” instead of can we live with her. It seem like she’s just want to keep a pet instead of give her a good life. However, Ti Moune had never really notice about this and so that it cause the tragedy because she looked too high to herself.

Peasants were always peasants in this book, no matter how hard she tried. Well actually, I didn’t think she deserved to be rich because she wasn’t really paid anything. She didn’t spend any time to work nor study. The only thing that Ti Moune did was to imagine something when she has a better life. For example, when Daniel was sick and Mama wanted Ti Moune to work because she couldn’t help anything actually. Ti Moune just pretended to work but actually only think about her patient. She’s been not concentrated in her real life, so that this also caused the tragedy that she’s been hungry and died, alone.

Admittedly, I’m not sure about what the writer wanted to teach me, but what I learned is that people shouldn’t underestimate their power and all dreams should be brought by a dependable effort. Firstly, as I said before, because of Ti Moune thought she’s special and everybody should love her, she lost herself and she thought her power was too big. In fact, Ti Moune was just a little peasant girl whose mind was filled by fake imaginations. Indeed, she was beautiful, but she’s also different so that the rich people couldn’t accept him. Otherwise, for people who have dreams, they should really do things to make them rich instead of thinking about luckiness that they might be brought by a rich man. The only thing people could depend on is their self. Since Ti Moune gave all her mind to Daniel and decided not to work for her future anymore, she already caused her ending. Thus, by reading the book, I learned that we should understand ourselves better and self-strong.