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.

Silent but colorful

I have been acting in a silent movie for a long time, so I was so happy and excited to be part of this silent movie project. Since the last time I did a silent movie, I have improved myself as an actor in many different ways, and our group had a great start on our story line. However, we can still make it better.

First thing I think we can do is getting our props ready because in a silent movie we cannot use any lines to tell the audience what we are doing. This is why we need to get all the props, such as bread, table set, glasses, background paper, posters and plates, then we can create a scene of Paris. The goal is to make audience know we are tourist in Paris and we go to a local restaurant.

The second thing I think we can improve is that we can use more body and hand movements to make our plot more clear. During our last performance, we improvised a lot of the stage blocking which went along with our plot, but it was not properly organized and rehearsed, so some part of the performance was not clear, and sometimes we were blocking each other.

The last but not the least, think that it would be better that we can practice more on the timing because it felt loose. Part of the reason was because we were trying to figure out some of our movements, and some other reason was because we didn’t practice enough, so we didn’t know the timing well enough to keep the plot tight and smooth.

Overall, I am looking forward to work on this project more with my classmates, and I hope that we can put on a successful silent movie this time since it will be my last silent movie project at CA. I am also excited about where our story is going because so far we have established a great plot and starting. We just need to finish it up. At the end, I hope everyone had a great break, and ready to work hard for last marking period.

Ideas

1. Since Liv hasn't done a silent movie project, and I cannot remember the last time I was in a silent movie. Also, Chrissy and Liv had some struggles with their body movements I feel a silent movie would be good for us to do.

2. Improv will also be a good choice since they did not have much experience before, so we can have classes and come up different themes to do.

3. I kind like the idea to do a riff off short musical which we can do on a certain topic about CA, and we can be creative and I personally didn't have much experience with musical in this class.

4. I also think we can have our own unique adaptation on a famous story such as Hamlet.

5. The last idea I have is that we may can take a three person play to put on stage.

Stick It To The Man!

School of rock is definitely the best production I have seen or participated at Cheshire Academy. This is also the first time I play a weak small character, and honestly to say that I had so much fun! I still remember the first day when I was so scared how we would work with such a massive cast till we rock the whole show. I have to say that hardworking pays off at the end.

This is the second musical I have ever done, and I am super thankful for everyone who supported and trusted me and most importantly giving me such an amazing experience. Ever since after Once On This Island I found musical has a magical power which can glue the entire Cast together with a extremely strong bond which straight play cannot always do. In the past few days I have heard multiple people told me that I have improved my acting skills which I am so happy and grateful because this cast has trained and taught me so much. I remember how I took advice from all different people who had watched School of Rock movie before, and how I practice my songs over and over with Ms.DiGiacomo and Mr.Trier. Of cause I had a struggle to sing with an crazily good voice --- Lexi. She has helped me to build a confidence to sing, and we have talked with each other a lot on our understanding of character. Without Lexi I could not rock as the way I did.

Even though I had to go back to VdP searching countless times for missing people; even though some people had shown some negative energy to the cast; even though everyone was constantly too tired; even though Ms.Guarino sent 2000 emails everyday, we have truly accomplish an amazing job to put on a high energy, rocking, hilarious and touching show three days in a row! I will never forget this adorable cast and the “goddamn” couch!

A place everyone will be a better person

Along with my senior year reaching to the end, senior speech has come to my doorway. For my last acting class’ first monologue assignment I decided to write my “I believe” speech, and it turned out to be a great speech. Before, I wrote this speech I was wondering what should I write about? I was doubting between writing my home --- VdP or what makes who I am today.

Of cause I choose the second one not because the first one was not important or special but because the second one can make more benefit for this community. I was a kid who was shy and self doubting, and I could never imagine that I am going to be the person who I am 4 years ago, but my experience on this 4 year journey has taught me that people need to know how important it is to help and take care each other. And this was one of the most important reason I wrote my speech about how I was helped by a stranger at Hong Kong air port. I choose this topic also because it was the moment that truly teachers me about the most beautiful part about human being! You are doing anything for any benefits, and you never expect to earn anything. It is just a human being nice to another!

I want to tell everyone about it because I want to remind them there is something wonderful we can always do, and it could be one of the most simple things like holding a bag or a cup of coffee. I am so glad that I came in this community because I have seen things like those happen everyday, but I am also seeing people choose to not care at all, so I want to tell these people that it takes everyone’s effort to make a good community, but it only needs one person to stop it!