Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat:

1.  Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer.

2.  She was born in 1969.

3.  She has a younger brother.

4.  She is religious

5.  She can speak Haitian Creole, English, and French.

6.  She began writing at nine years old.

7.  She moved to Brooklyn, New York, to join her parents when she was 12 years old.

8.  When she was two years old, her father immigrated to New York, so she and her brother were raised in uncle and aunt's house.

9.  She fought discrimination, and most her books talk about the national identity, mother-daughter relationships, and diasporic politics.

10.  She has a website.  On the website, she is selling her new book, which is called "The Art of Death".  In her introduction of the book, "It is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work."  I would love to read it after applying to college.

11.  She said, "Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses."   I am impressed, and I'd love to borrow this sentence one day.

Reflection on Theater

The Subjects I Know Well:

1.  I understood the most terms of the theatre and the terms of acting, including acting terms and stage terms.
2.  I understood Uta Hagen's and Viola Spolin's theories, and I think it is good for us to use Viola Spolin's improvisation game and Uta Hagen's nine questions to practice acting.
3.  I know the terms of stage design, including props, set pieces, and backdrop.


I Need More Work On:
1.  I need more improvisation acting practice to improve my ability to handle the emergency on the stage.  In addition, I need more improvisation acting practice with partners, so that we can know each other more to have a better cooperation.
2.  I need to review Stanislavski's method and many other theorists that have the different theories.
3.  I need to work on remembering the type of the stages and the function of each type.
4.  I need to know the abbreviation of theatre terms to get the point that I lost on the test back.

mini performance

       Three different groups showed different theme by different styles of performance.  Nan's group has race as their theme, the theme of Helen, David and Joey's group is violence, and the theme of our group was police.

       For the race and violence themes, the two words are abstract, but both of them made great performance that they were easy to be understood.  Especially, I like the way they choose to perform.  Race is more like group of people's identities, and different identities are all independent and special, so it is really good for Nan, David and Josh to pick one identity each and pick the monologue from them.   They all tell their stories, with icons, like the religion for Jews and raps for the black.  Therefore, they performed each race clearly. Helen, David, and Joey were using similar techniques, but they chose a short monologue from each race they represented and connected each dialogue to a scene. I think it is the best way to represent the anger and violence.  For a same event, Helen represented Jew and Joey represented the black.  Even though they saw the event differently, the they all showed their misunderstanding to each other and anger. 

       Our theme, police, is more related to a daily figure.  However, I felt like it is hard to act out, because there is no direct interview from the police.  The figure of police is depicted in black and jew's words.  Aaron found an interesting scene that the boy sent the other blacks out of the dangerous place and got accidents.  Based on this scene, we wanted to show directly the identity of polices and the relationship between policies and the black.  Aaron was the black boy, Yun was Richard Green, and I was the white cop.  My goal is to show the discrimination and rude of the white cop, but it is hard to perform a silence show.  My biggest problem was that I would say something, but the words should all come from the book.  Unfortunately, all policies lived in other's descriptions, so I had to pick discriminate lines everywhere in the book and from different people.  Then, I found "heil hitler" saying from the black.  It is a memory showed that the black were really angry to Jews.  It is really ironic that what I spoke to the black boy in the performance were all originally from the black people.

       It is not correct to be racist, but as a white cop, I think there isn't no reason for them to hate the blacks.  They fought, they argued, and they got troubles to police.  At this moment, the white police not only disdain black but also are afraid of them.  Therefore, I borrowed the black's words, borrowed the black's anger and released them back to another black person.  That is how relationship works between police and the black. 

In-class Inflection

        Verbatim Theater is the theater that director interview different people about one topic, use the interviews as scripts and transfer them to the stage according to the conversation and environment of the interview.  I think the reason people like the verbatim theater is that it shows the variety of people's mind, and depict the interviewees as real as possible.  It is the news cannot do, because the news will paragraph the interview and it more likely to rearrange or pick the words differently than the interviewees' original words.  Secondly, news cannot show the background of interviews.  Therefore, verbatim theater not only provides the real story but also depict the environment of the interview.  It visually gives people a stronger sense of the theme.

        Verbatim Theater for me is the theater more close to daily life.  The exercise asked us to tell the boarding life in the campus, which it is too common to notice.  Helen, Joey, David and I were in one group, discussed the topic of roommates.  We introduced our roommates, told a story about them or between them and us.  It was a really interesting topic, but I think it was a little bit difficult for me to act.  I was going to retell Helen's and David's stories, repeating their words, learning their speaking habits, and imitating their gestures.  I thought it is another usual acting like I did, such as Romeo and Juliet and Fences, before until I made my observation of two people.  We were like ordinary people, who do not have really extreme personality or extraordinary experiences, so it is difficult for me to depict them.  Especially, on the performance day, they were sitting there watching me play, so it was more pressure for me.  In addition, we all know each other, so it was so easy to tell whether I acted really like Helen and David or not.  In the stage of verbatim theater, there is only one correct answer for actors.  It is absolutely a challenge for me, but I really enjoy it and was happy to play it.  

Theater in my mind

In my opinion, theater is another form of literature.  It is more visual.  The setting is set in front of people, actors standing on the stage with light on.  There might be music, but whatever element is added to the stage, they can never take place of the story that is told.  It is great for audience to define the literature with more clear figure, but it is also disadvantaged for audience to define a literature.  Some theater is created from nowhere, but for some theaters, which are adaptations of literatures, they limit audience's imagination to the story.  I think the reason of people like theater is the same reason of people like reading books: people want to know the other people's lives from different country, different social level, different time period, or different world, so that they can broad their views.  The biggest difference between watching theaters and reading books is that theater is easier for people to understand.  It show everything in front of your eyes, so there is no need for people to imagine, such as the character's face or setting. 

I love participating in theater because I not only want to sit in the audience feeling the characters' feelings, but also want to process the feeling from the beginning to the end from characters' perspectives.  I can be them; I am them;  I can experience different lives on the stage, have different attitude of lives and have opposite personalities from real me.  Therefore, it is really important for me to throw myself away.  I should read script and look into the story before I play the role.  Then, after analyzing the role I play, I should think and act in his/her/its way.  Being like the character is my goal.  However, it is still a challenge for me to reach the goal because of the accent and gestures.  The fun part of acting is also taking this challenge.

Spring Improv Reflection

        It is a hilarious and fantastic show!  The spring improv, Propless, is comprised of many small improvising acting games.  The show is in the lecture hall instead of the black box, which it brings more casual and relaxing elements into the show.  The show is directed by Sam Weed with Julia Rafferty, Aaron Luo, Helen Zheng, Nan Zhou, Ray Dong, Julia Shatalov, Mao Inoue, Jerry Yu, Krystal Charter, and Olivia Williamson.  They literally are amazing and creative.  The show might not be great without them.  Of course, the participants are also helpful and passionate.  During the show, I was sitting in the chair, clapping all the time, and I could not stop laughing.

        In the show, I love the game of translating the most.  Two people sitting on the chair to communicate with each other in the different language to solve the problem, and there are two people standing back the two people and being their interpreters.  The communication is really funny.  For the first group, Jerry and Aaron mainly focus on the body language and emotional expression by changing their pitch and exaggerating the arm work.  They are facing divorce, and the story looks completed.  Thanks to the two interpreters and actors, I think they also show the complicated reaction from different kinds of people.  Some people will hesitate and want to redeem a failed marriage, but the other people might be tougher and decisive.  For this show, I was laughing at the beginning and then felt sad about it immediately when Jerry stopped fighting and being quiet.  The contrast that the show gave to the audience is excellent.  I do not think they all designed this.  They really might do not think too much.  This improvising is great.  The second translating game is performed by Nan, Ray, Krystal, and Daniel.  Nan and Ray showed a totally different skill from Aaron and Jerry's performance.  They emphasized a rhythm of sound and the timbre.  It is like a pitched percussion, which is really interesting.  I like this idea.  Daniel participated well especially in translating the first sentence.  I forgot what he said, but he imitated the rhythm and coughing sound.

        I also like the Aaron, Ray, Nan, and Julia R's acting on dating performance.  Sometimes, when you are improvising, it is hard to keep the active body language and facial expression.  However, they really did a good job.  They vividly imitated temperament of that groups of the people (and Mr. Cirmo).  Moreover, for the last game, I love Olivia's idea when she wanted to drive Helen away from the bench.  Actually, Olivia has a lot of good ideas and wonderful punchlines, but I especially like this idea because I think the thought might be too hard to have.  She is like an agent from CIA in the Marvel comics who wants to scare some strangers so that they can get their mission done.  I hysterically love this joke.  She did not even talk and look at Helen, and she just made it!

WC Reflection

          It has been a long time from the last revision.  Now, when we open the work, and we can see there are still a lot of problems in it.  My biggest problem is the conclusion.  I do not know why I just wrote one paragraph of conclusion.  The conclusion paragraph has five lines, six sentences, which is much shorter than the other paragraph.  Especially compared to the introduction, the introduction could be the two or three times of the conclusion, so when we read, we will feel the essay is unfinished, or it is an anticlimax.  Therefore, I have to expand my conclusion to revise it more interesting, thoughtful, and detailed.  I can write about the fun facts or feelings after the performance.  I can write about how uncomfortable my custom is and how I work with my partner.  I can also write about what I learned from this performance and what I learned from this character.  I do not know whether it is good to write, but I can additionally discuss the other groups' Amanda, and the acting knowledge or the understanding to the character I learned.

          The other improvement of the essay should be the topic ending sentences and thesis statement.  Actually, I cannot believe I wrote my thesis statement so vaguely after so many labs I wrote.  The thesis statement is as important as the hypothesis which needs to be logical and detailed.  I think it is good to write the purpose of the performance and how you will portray your character as thesis statement instead of pointing out what you will explore on only.  The topic sentence of each paragraph has less problem than the ending sentences.  In fact, ending sentences are not the things that I focused on before, so it probably will not be a big challenge for me.  The last problems are grammar, in-text citation format, title page and works cited.  Today in class, I already changed the in-text citation, title page, and works cited.  Then, after solving the conclusion and ending sentences problem, I will go to the writing center to fix my grammar.  This blogger must have grammar mistakes...haha...  An interesting fact is that when I graded my paper and then see the scores that the others graded to me, there is no such a huge difference between the scores.  Similarly, the score I graded for my partner and the score she graded are really close as well.  Therefore, it demonstrates that we will definitely do better if we judge our work strictly like other did.