Being an actor

Our group's interpretation is mostly based on the original text. Instead of creating whole new settings, we inserted few things to emphasize the contrast between rich and poor. First thing that we used to describe the contrast was music. Since our group has wonderful musicians, music was the first source that we came up with. James who plays Tonton plays ukulele which represents poor side and Ben who plays Gabriel plays piano which represents rich side. More than only playing those instruments, we also used music in our lines. While peasants concern about their daily survival, riches have conversation about old classical music which also show extreme contrast. Also, we focused on creating the characteristic of riches. Since the original text really didn't describe the riches, we needed to imagine what riches talk about and make the personalities up. And that is where we came up with Daniel's character which is really different from original Daniel's character.
 We tried to make Daniel as mean character as we could so audience can feel that rich actually destroyed poor. Original text is more focused on Desiree's desire. Story begins with her own desire and ends up to the tragedy which is result of her desire. However, we didn't really agree with the ending and wanted more realistic and critical ending. So, we started our scene with showing the contrast and led to the tragedy which is all caused by riches. Our goal is to make audience feel this story is about how cruel the rich are, not a naive peasant girl's sad love story.

 There are a lot of personal challenges for me to do this project. The biggest issue is acting out our performance for 20 minutes and keeping our energy which also requires the perfect memorization of lines. Since all of our group members never had an experience of performing on the stage for 20 minutes and are not professional actors, it is really challenging to be an actor who can deliver what author meant to show. To do so, first, we all need to memorize the lines perfectly which is really challenging work for me. Secondly, we need to create and put emotions in the lines and control them. Even if I got that second step, it is extremely difficult to recall and expose those same level of emotions every time when we perform. I think it is because my personal level of energy changes by what happened to me on that day in real life, but I still need to express appointed amount of energy when I perform. And I think that is one of the most important skill that is required to actors. Also, to make our scene better, actors need to create more chemistry with each other and better teamwork which we are not really good at yet. Ben and I are still focusing on remembering our lines when we practice on the stage. As soon as we are completely done with lines, we are going to work on our emotions and character.