Oral Presentation Reflection

      I am not very satisfied with the final product I made. It only took 11 minutes but when I practiced before, it took me about 13 minutes.
      My oral presentation is divided into five major parts:
        > introduction of the novel + understanding of the texts:
            I make a brief introduction about the story New York Day Women, and I illustrate two intriguing points of the story that appeal to me, which are the two major themes: the mother-daughter relationships and the Haitian immigrants. Under each theme, I also put my explanation with supporting some examples that are directly from the book to tell the listeners what makes this story stand out from the rest of the book and why I would like to explore them more in my adaptation. 
        > critical perspectives on the dramatic potential of the texts
            In the second part, I introduce my adaptation more specifically, in which includes two stories and a pre-scene and ending scene. While I am telling each of the stories I create, I also relate them with the two major themes that I mention above in the first part. 
        > insights into the performance process experienced from page to stage
            When I listen to this part later after I finish the oral presentation, I clearly realize that there is more I could add up to it. This part is relatively short that all the others. I just briefly introduce the two challenges we meet --- need a lot of props to set up the scene & the large age span we need to perform --- but there is not any detailed explanation about how we solve the problem. I think I could add more details into it like we were using all the three triangular walls in the scene I during the rehearsal but we removed all of them in the rest of the scenes; and, after we realized that that would be a huge time-consuming "project" to do in the real performance so we just left all three of them throughout the play on the stage. 
        > critical evaluation of their particular role and contribution to this process of transformation or adaptation and realization
          In this part, I specifically introduce the role I play --- Suzette, and the challenges I meet, progress I have made, the strength and weakness I have while playing the two different ages of this character. Again, like what I did in the first part, I use many detailed examples like the specific body languages that I added during the performance for enriching the monologue. However, as I notice later when I listen to the recording, my ending sentence is to "rush"; I could add more to the part when I play the Suzette at 35. That is one thing I am ashamed of. 
        > conclusion
          I bring out the two major themes of the story that appeal to me again at the beginning of the conclusion. Then, I use more detailed things to tell the listeners how I feel empathize with my character as I perform it. Once again, I have got a very rush ending at last, which I think is one of the reasons that shorten my time. 

Written Draft or Oral

New York Day Women 

- Introduction of the novel + Understanding of the texts

   I adapt New York Day Women, one piece of the stories from the Krik Krak which was written by Edwidge Danticat. It tells a typical day of a “day woman” from her daughter Suzette’s view. Stood out from the other eight stories in the novel, it takes place in Brooklyn, New York. As Suzette follows her mother, all those memories that her mother has told her wandering in her mind. Many intriguing points from this story appeal to me. Start from a major theme — the mother-daughter relationships. It is very complex and subtle. I can feel her embarrassment as she sees her mother is thinking about buying her an African print dress, and at the same time her great concern when she worries about her mom’s blood pressure and wants to stop her mom from eating the frankfurter. It is not limited to only these two aspects, and the more about it is what I want to explore and show to the audience. In addition to this, another big theme that grabs my attention is the Haitian Immigrants. Even though the day woman migrates to New York in seeking for a better life for her family, meanwhile, she also strives to keep the Haitian identity and insists on doing something that is related to her memories in the past such as peeling the skin off poultry by herself or saving clothes for the relatives in Haiti. But this kind of sentiment for Haiti is absolutely not what Suzette could understand at first, which is also the reason that creates the gap between her and her mom. And the process of dissolving such gap, which was not directly showed in the text, is another thing I would like to explore more in my adaptation. 

- critical perspectives on the dramatic potential of the texts 

   Thus, inspired by these two themes, I start to create my adaptation from the New York Day Women. There are two stories included in it. One is extended from the day woman’s quote, which was put after the daughter’s complaint that her mother never went to any of her parent-teacher association meetings when she was in school, and it said that “I don't want to make you ashamed of this day woman. Shame is heavier than a hundred bags of salt.” The unresolved bitterness that the day woman attempts to hide and Suzette’s lack of understanding are just what I want to show and magnify to the audience. Therefore, scene I was set up at the parent-teacher conference in the school. Suzette is sitting there in silence. Her mind is filled with grievance, anger and hatred toward her mother but at the same time, the day woman is standing behind the door of the classroom and looking at her daughter secretly. By playing such great contrast, I would like to more vividly present the gap between the mother and daughter, which refers to one of the major theme that I have mentioned at the beginning, the mother-daughter relationship. Then, it comes to the transition part, which was not really mentioned in the original text. In order to create an opportunity to let Suzette be curious about what happened to the day woman in the past, I construct scene II, in which Suzette accidentally sees a letter from Haiti to her mom, and that is the first time for her to have a deep conversation with her mom. Despite these two stories, I also set up a pre-scene and an ending scene, in which the grown up daughter is braiding her mother’s hair. This was inspired from the epilogue of the book, in which braiding hair was kept mentioned by the author. Braiding hair is not only a kind of Haitian traditional culture. For the author, it is like the “ninety-nine women” she has written. For me, I think it symbolizes unity, the kind of unity that distant people like Suzette and her mother finally come together. So, I put the scene of braiding hair at both the beginning and the ending to portray a happy ending. 

- insights into the performance process experienced from page to stage 

  While turning the screenplay into the performance on the stage, we met various challenges. The first big one is the stage set. Because some scenes need a lot of props to set up such as the classroom in the scene I, it is really a time-consuming thing to move the props before each scene. Other than that, the major problem would be the span of age. Since the adaptation is performed like a flashback, there is a time span over ten years. In order to achieve that, we were thinking about using special effect makeup and the wig at first but there were all denied at last due to the time limit. And also, there is not enough time for too much costume change so we just strive to achieve that through our own tone, mood and modality. 

- critical evaluation of their particular role and contribution to this process of transformation or adaptation and realization 

  I play the daughter Suzette at two ages, one is about 15 year old and an older one in 35. When I play the Suzette at 15, the age is not a problem. Since my age is very closed to the character setting, I do not need to disguise myself. And what I need to focus is the monologue part. There is not any interaction between the two characters in this scene. Thus, I attempt to enrich the monologue by using some body language and variation in tone. Instead of like what I did in the first draft, just standing there at a fixed position, I add many elements to enrich my performance. For example, when I reach the emotional point, yelling toward the front that “and all these things which make me feel ashamed were given by her”, I throw my backpack to the ground, increase my volume and speed. However, as I noticed many times during the performance, the pacing is not appropriate: I went way too fast to ignore the clear pronunciation of some words. That is one thing that I am ashamed of. Then, the play goes on to the scene II. Different from scene I, many interactions were displayed. Not only presented in the scripts, I also add many physical contact into it. When my mom is telling me her difficult life in the past, I move my chair closed to her, hold her hand unconsciously, pat on her back and comfort her in a soft voice that “I can be back with you together”. That is really a touching moment at the stage. I can feel the barriers between me and my mom vanish. And then, I become the Suzette at 35 years old. I am wearing a turquoise dress, standing behind my mom and braiding her hair. There is not that much thing deliberately changed like my voice or clothes. All I would like to convey to the audience by this moment is just a sense of happy and tranquility. As I finish braiding the hair, my mom falls asleep, the scene ends. 

- conclusion

   Playing the character Suzette from the New York Day Women is really a memorable and meaningful experience. Although not everything came out as perfect as what we expect, the two big themes: the mother-daughter relationship and the Haitian immigrant were successfully portrayed through the adaptation and the two characters we build up. I hope the wall that last over ten years between Suzette and the day woman before being dissolved can bring people of constant and long moved. 

Reflection on our final performance

      Finally, we videoed our final performance on this Wednesday. Although I and my partner, Yichen, both were not very satisfied with this final production, we tried our best within such limit amount of time. However, many problems was worth of reflecting on.
      The problem started from the script. Thank to our memorization, fortunately, we did not make too many mistakes during the actual performance. However, as I noticed many times during the performance, I went way too fast to ignore the clear pronunciation of some words. I knew that I was a little nervous, and I wanted to use various pacing to express my emotional thoughts but I could realize how fast I talked at some points. I hoped the IB scorers could see our scripts as watching the video. As what Mr. Guarino pointed out, we should practice running our script again and again before the performance including every specific detail that we wanted to add like pacing, pause, or body language, so that when it came to the real show, everything would be automatically jumped out. I felt pretty guilty about the not enough time I took to work on this.
      Another problem, same as what I had in the performance of Romeo and Juliet, was my unnatural facial emotion. I tried to convince myself that I was the daughter Suzette, I was the daughter Suzette ... again and again during the performance but I still felt like I was Sarah. I could not have a realistic and natural reaction as the play went on. The most "awkward" moment I felt would be when I was sitting in the classroom and Yichen said her monologue outside in the hallway. Within that a few minutes, I did not know what I can do. I was like stuck there. There was a series of thoughts going on in my mind like I was very sad because my mother did not come to my parent-teacher association meeting whereas the others' parents were all here; I should look really sad; I should cry; I should tell the audience that I felt so bad and miserable ... There was "a lot" that I wanted to express to the audience but I could not exactly convert them into my real body language. Comparing with me, I think Yichen really did a good job on that. While I was sitting with her face-to-face in the second scene and listening to her story about those hard times when she first came to the U.S., I can really see that her whole body was trembling. I was very impressed by that, and I just put my hand on her shoulder involuntarily and tried to comfort her. She is a really good actor; her realistic performance can naturally promote my reaction.
      Overall, it is a great and meaningful experience by playing the role, daughter Suzette, in the New York Day Women. Although the final production is not very satisfied, I learned many performing skills again. I am very grateful to my partner Yichen, our "lighting technician" James and our teacher Ms. Guarino.