Final project

https://youtu.be/C9k7qajXX-Y

Move On!

Yes, this is going to be my last blog post for Ms.Guarino’s class. Well there so many things I have learned from this class over my years, but there is one thing that showed us as a class what is theater all about. I remember watching my very first monologue recording, and I was laughing so hard because I would not accept it to be my final draft as senior John Jiang, but freshman John Jiang was pretty happy I got all my lines right. However, the senior John Jiang cannot remember his lines as well as the freshman did!

Yes, I forgot a line on stage, and yes I thought I had the lines solid! While I was all emotional and sad about my last acting class, my head had a blackout, so I forgot a line in my song which I remembered the best “I will be tender, I will be gentle and awful sentimental!” See, I do remember this line, but I forgot it anyway. I was so lucky that I was playing a tin man, so I just stayed still as if I ran out of oil which gave me about solid 3 seconds to think about my line, but I could not anyway. I just sang the line I can remember with all the confidence I can find at the moment, so it looked like I knew what I was doing.
These are the moments represent theater and life. Sometimes, no matter how prepared you are, things could happen which can lead us into what we would never expect. However, we cannot stop and be so sad and let everyone know because the show needs to go on and our lives need to go on! I think now I am truly ready to move on from what I have now because I need to better myself like I did when I was a freshman. Now, I will start as a freshman again in college chasing my dream and passion!

Final Project Proposal

For a four people scene work acting project, I think we should do Wizard of Oz. First of all we know the story and characters which will be helpful when we work together on this piece. I think we can cast: Chrissy as Scarecrow, Livi as Dorothy, Michael as Cowardly Lion and me as Tin Man. This cast will give us a good fit to our range. We will start with our group scene work and then we will work on our individual songs.

What I say is not what I mean!

In our real life, a lot people say things which does not represent what they mean. For example, sometimes when Ms.Guarino say: “Maybe!?” She really means “No that's not a very good idea.” And when John Jiang says: “I don't really know!” He really means “I know but I just cannot tell you what it is exactly about!” Our last scene from English class is one the perfect example of these moments, and it is also the biggest challenge for us to accomplish! As I mentioned before, the hardest part to show from out acting in this scene is our emotion changes! It is hard because the writing of this play gives us the feeling that all of these lines are in the same tone. However, there are many mixed emotions behind the actual dialogue and we want people to sense that even they don't know anything about the actual story.

So how can we do that and how we did? After many changes and practice. We finally gave our final production last Thursday, and I think it's bad because we have shown the doubt in Tom, the sad and anger in Amanda and the confusing in Laura. From the beginning of yelling at each other to slowly building up the temper. It has been a different feeling for me. I used to just think about my character and how will I present; however, this time I spend more time on study how Laura thinks on her head and why she would say each line which helps me a lot when I react to it. I didn't have as many lines as Chrissy had, so I figured to do other things to make my character as effective and interesting as Amanda.

Overall I enjoyed working with Livi and Chrissy, and I am very happy to see all of us becoming better at acting and working with each other! At the end, I am looking forward to work on our final piece next week with four of us in it, and I hope we can make it a perfect ending mark for our last class together!

Character work

I personally can feel Tom this character pretty well, since I was raised in a culture where most moms are like Amanda who designs their children’s entire life for them instead of letting them do it on their own. Tom has been raising by his mother, and suffers everyone from his mother’s complaining and bossing. This is the reason why he wants to leave the house like what his father did 16 years ago. However, it is never that easy because he has a sister who unfortunately has been controlled by the mother even more. In this case Tom as an older brother cannot just let his sister to be torched more, so he decides to stay in the house and keep them from starving. However, The more mother pushes Tom the more he wants to leave.

In this specific scene, as Tom he is trying to avoid his mother’s endless talking as a normal day, he realizes that his mother is pushing harder and harder. Two scene before this scene, Tom already plans out to escape the house, but he still need a lighter to explode this off; a reason for him to eventually decide leaving the house! He cannot make his mind until the moment when Amanda uses her final and biggest push on Tom which gives him the power to finally leave at the end.

Over this scene, even though the lines seem have a similar tone, but there are actually tons of layers of emotion can go into. The last time we try to go over our lines, and it did not really work, since we didn't analysis line by line on the different emotions, we did not see a build up and how these two character changed their thoughts in their head. I will definitely make sure we as a group go through the lines and talking about not just our surface level acting, but deep thinking in our mind.

Float

Float this word was the most mentioned one during our performance in class, and seems everyone likes when there is a float. However, I think this is not success of our work but an accident! Please let me explain, first of all I truly enjoyed everyone’s work and I think the float did make the scene better. Second of all, I don't think creating a float is our main purpose in a scene because of two main reasons.

The first one is that lines and emotion of the passage is the most important element since our main goal is telling a story to a person who doesn't know it. Because of this, More than often we need fresh eyes to give us comments in order to make our work better, and this is why when we all know the story we start looking for something else to focus on, such as float! The reason why our group’s scene had a “float” is because 1. Michael and I know each other pretty well. 2. We didn't know our lines perfectly, so we had to pick something else up to cover our problem. This situation often happens when there is improv show because that is the place you want to keep everything in a nice float which will make actors to improv easier. In our case, it is easier for us to remember our lines or come up with a similar meaning lines.

The second reason I feel this is a failure rather than a success is because we didn't try to make our own character more authentic and realistic, instead we tried to make our scene look less awkward. Luckily we made it, but this also gives me a warning on what should I focus more on in the future. If I am working with some other people who I don’t know well, I don’t know how will I be able to create a float on stage by improving, so learning our lines and character are important! I will be more careful in my next project!

Escapism

Since I have been reading Hemingway in English class, I have a lot of different understandings and approaches on people who are suffering in the reality and they choose to escape from it. In the story, I have noticed that all these four characters are trying to get out of their life which they are having now.

For Tom, the problem he is facing is that he is stucked with his mother and sister which means that he is having a life he hates, but he cannot change easily. The situation is that he cannot find the perfect way to leave the broken home. He cannot leave his sister behind, but he also cannot bring his sister with him because his sister is such a weak person who is always depends on other people. This situation is the direct trigger which caused his leaving from home. I see this character as the person who is telling the story with a negative emotion which set him as an unreliable narrator. I would play this character as if he was going through the darkest memory in his past experience.

For Amanda, since I mentioned the Tom I would expect her to be the worst behaving character in the entire play. She is always living in her own self built world where she is still young and beautiful, so she can still pretend her pride and self respect. She is one of these kind people who always want the attention and control everything in her life since she made a wrong decision once.

For Laura, she is the glasses in the pay. She is this beautiful little thing, and she wants to escape from the plate the control, so she can start her own life. However, no matter how realistic these animals are, they can never be real. She will always be controlled by her mother.

The last is Jim. Who is similar to the mother, but what he missed is the feeling under spot light. He is always trying to tell Tom how “different” they are from other workers. It is just like how he once felt “different” from others in the school.

This is what I have so far on all these characters, and I will dig deeper as we practice more and perform more on stage. I think this is a great piece for us to work on as class unit, and we all have familiar character we used to play, but within new excitement and challenges.