Last Post

If I am going, to be honest, this class wasn't something that I was excited to take, I remember just wanting to avoid nonfiction reading as much as possible and this was a way to do that. But I also remember that drive to see what I was capable of, to see how I could destroy the path that had been laid before me, how I could disrupt the system that came along with being a trilogy at a private school in Cheshire Connecticut. I gave up everything to come here, and most days it felt worthless, it felt like I was losing everything all my friends all the activities that I had enjoyed and it felt like I was continuing the loop of my family. I remember coign into this class and all of us sitting in a circle, we talked about where we were in our comfort levels. I thought that I would never be able to do anything crazy in this class, that there wasn't going to be a moment in which I would be able to shine. Then I did my fences monologue. I hadn't practiced it to the level of my performance and I never really do that with my acting, I practice quietly and small until I get onto the stage, I think that’s the part of me that is afraid, that still is afraid. That part of me that feels the judgment and fear, the one that cries before nearly every performance. I still am that person. But it doesn't matter because in this class I learned a lot about theater and arts, I learned what I loved about it and what I hated. I learned that theater isn't something that I would be able to do in life. Through this class I learned a lot about being a role model and when to grit my teeth. I have learned to be a better viewer and learned techniques that I see on stage to make me a better actor. I have improved my memorization skills by needing to learn lines. I’ve learned how to analyze theatrical performances and the importance of all roles in pieces as well. Honestly, I grew to live to perform even though it is something that I am very self-conscious about, and I don't think that ill ever changes for me. I’ve learned about the difficulties fo theater and the frustrations that come along with the inequality and harshness of the subject. I don’t think that I will do much theater in college and none outside of college, as much as I enjoy being onstage and performance solo, and its something that I want to continue to do, I feel as though it just isn't for me. Looking back I have the same fears and a few more now. I believe that theater has helped and hurt me in my experience with it but I am grateful for all the experiences that I have had so that I know what I will do later on in life. Overall, this class has taught me a lot about the theater industry and what it takes to be an actor as well as an audience member, and a technician behind the scenes. I have learned a lot about the arts as well and learned about my own limits within the arts and what I will do for the rest of my life when looking at the arts and theater. Undoubtedly I have gained lost of great memories, and life lessons through our class and am learning glad that I took Literature and Performance over any other class. Even though theater hasn’t worked out for me and I still have the same fears I think that I know how to manage them even though they are still there.

Nye Questions

Hope and/or pessimism are sometimes reflected in poetry. In the work of at least two poets

you have studied, examine either or both of these attitudes and the way in which the poets have

chosen to convey them.



In Nye’s Poems, she stresses a lot on elements of service and making the world a better place. Nye stresses these ideas with lines like “We’re not going to be able to live in this world if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing with one another.” This shows that Nye is trying to unite people and I think this sends a message of hope and teching to younger generations. The another line that Nye says is in Two Countries “Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.” and “it remembers being alone and thanks to something larger that there are travelers, that people go places larger than themselves.” Both of these lines are very useful in showing Nye’s life and her beliefs in terms of healing and having hope for the future. I find that Nye focuses on hope and healing feelings that are rather optimistic even though she mentions some real-life tragic moments.

Nye also keeps her feelings of hope by demonstrating connections between family members to make sure that people who may take things like that for granted see some of the important elements of life and love. I think that Nye focuses so much on relationships because of the stress that her family put on them, this can be seen in the entire poem “Shoulders” is about a father caring for a son, this connection is often portrayed in literature as an extremely close bond or one that is completely destroyed. I think that Nye also takes great care in making sure that in her poes there is a strong bond between them to show hope and love and some level of a “model family”

Shoulders
Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

 The road will only be wide.

 The rain will never stop falling. 

I think that this piece talks a lot about what we do for the one we love and the lengths that we go to for them to be safe and happy. In this poem, the main character is the man who is carrying his son in the rain. Another thing is that I think is important to draw on is the line "Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE" I think that it is important to pay attention to how the author writes these lines and talks about how much this man cares for his son, the internal structure and priority for his son to stay dry and asleep. I think that it is something people even today use as a way to measure parents love but talking about how he doesn't have anything that recognizes him is also something that is very relevant with volunteering and working today. I think that the ending of this poem is also really important because of the idea of not just doing kind actions to your family or people that you love but to involve everybody and to care for everything themselves. The idea of living in harmony with other people is something that has become very mainstream and earning ways to coexist with different people is something that the author feels very passionate about. Another thing that I find really interesting about this poem is that element of "the rain will never stop falling" this can relate to her struggles as coming from the middle east in her heritage and dealing being an interracial child. I think that part of what Naomi was showing is the struggle that she may have gone through in relation to her race. The way that modern society views people from the Middle East is difficult because of prejudice and the hate that many people have created for people, This line is very deep and rooted in something that Naomi may have felt.


poem ties into her roots
Talks about a struggle that parents try to shield their children from
Connections between people and their relationships together
PRotecting those you love
NAture being symbolism for other hardships in life (prejudices, conflicts, etc.)
No rhyme scheme
Showing what an ideal world may look like - caring for each other


This poem has 1 stanza with 16 lines and 6 sentences.

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a 
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

This poem has 2 stanzas aswell

A reptition in the word Skin 

21 lines

This poem talks about the way that skin has a conetion with people and telling your story. This poem also draws on the idea of traveling and finding mening in life and beinga  part of somethign outside of your own small bubble.

Blog Post - Answer a question from blog

Blog post due: Choose any question (from samples posted on the blog) that you have not yet worked on yet and write an answer to it based on only Emily Dickinson's poems. Due by class time!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While some poems focus exclusively on a personal or private experience, others reflect on
the place of the individual in the larger human community. In the work of at least two poets,
explore the ways in which poems have conveyed the poet’s sense of the world beyond the private
sphere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dickinson talks a lot about her hopes and dreams, but because of her fears she is confined to her room and the only way that Dickinson is able to reach the public and try and leave her desired impact is through her writing and her poetry. In one of Dickinson's' poems, she writes "If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain" Dickinson wants to leave an impact on not only the people that were close to her, imaginably only some of her family, but the whole world. She goes on to write "to cool one pain, to help one fainting robin, into his nest again" Here Dickinson is making a connection that I feel many would dismiss from her. Because of Dickinson and her lifestyle, I felt that she might have been seen as cold or lacking in a maternal nature because of the female pressures of the time, all of her expectations were changed and adding this careful line that speaks to a more feminine dainty element. I thought that this was a line where Dickinson also wanted to relate to her audience in a way she might not have before. IN another one of her poems Dickinson also talks about "Water is taught by thirst" and later goes onto saying "Peace, by battles told" Dickinson wasn't someone who would have been given a large education, much less one that would have had high levels of human interaction. By talking about "peace" and "Battles" it talks a lot about Dickinsons having to teach herself in a lot of ways when living alone and without the help of anybody else. I also think that it is Dickinson talking a good portion about having to learn to live with her fear and her loneliness and how that affects her life and her happiness.  Because of Dickinsons fears and her own sustainable lifestyle that worked for her she had to make sacrifices and often times she had to either get rid of dreams or find ways around them. Because of this Dickinson used her outlet to reach out and give inspiration to the public and find a way to accomplish her dreams, overall I think Dickinson let a lot of insight into her life through her poems and that it tells a story of a girl who is alone but desperately trying to leave a wide impact on the world. 

Emily Dickinson Poems:

WATER is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;	5
Birds, by the snow.

This poem talks about a connection between human learning and elements of peace live and war along with the growth and pulsation of the world as it too grows and learns. 

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. This poem really talks about her drive to make an impact and change the world but with her fear that she might  not be able to do so and that is not what she wants. Naomi Shihab A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south, because his son is asleep on his shoulder. No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow. This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo but he’s not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE. His ear fills up with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy’s dream deep inside him. We’re not going to be able to live in this world if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing with one another. The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling. This poem is the one that I would use with the second Emily Dickinson one because I feel that they both talk about changing someone's life and making an impact and I think that there are lots of similarities between them.

Sample Questions Outline

5. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study which provides an effective introduction of an important character or characters. How would you use staging, design and acting to ensure that this introduction would have dramatic importance for the audience?

7. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study where suspense is the dominant mood conveyed to the reader. Indicate how, by staging and action, you might explore a suspenseful scene on stage for an audience.

9. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study which presents a clash of two cultures.By paying due attention to the context of the passage, outline how you would dramatize the clash in order to bring out the differences between the two cultures for an audience.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5

• "then came a resounding crash, so shattering that she knew a giant star had fallen to smash their tiny village. Then a silence. A silence so profound that the insects held their breath." (page 27)
• "Bon Dieu!" she cried out in the darkness. "A car is en panne. A man is in pain!"" (Page 30)
• "Once again Desiree reached through the window to touch the stranger... As she sang dozens of lamps appeared, dotting the dark night, some coming down from the hill, others approaching along the road." (Pages 30 and 31)
• This is the introductory scene for Daniel Beauxhomme and the point at which we see the beginning of rising action in the novel.
• How to get the importance of the scene through to the audience.
• I would remove the Gods from the scene to show that they do not yet know od Desiree's love for the man.
• I would also want to do this to make sure that it was clear based on the wardrobe that Daniel is wealthy and Desiree along with her people are not.
• I would use the moment of the crash as a scene change, this way I would go from the stream setting to another spot in the forest where the crash takes place.
• The staging would be very crowded to show the seclusion that the crash is taking place.
• A back projection of the hill and road would be good to show where the car could have been coming from and where Desiree went up to to get help.
• I would make sure to really push on the element of silence that the book talks about on page 27 to show the theme of suspense. One thing that I would do is take away the music that I had playing before from the festival up the hill to really draw on the fact that there is going to be a change.
• I would want Daniel to be wearing a formal suit.
• Blue shirt to show a connection with Agwe and it would also show a relation to the butterfly that Desiree caught in the previous scene while she was in the river.
• I would want the car to be white and be a vintage car to set the time as when cars were not as well known and would be harder to get to the island, explaining why some people didn't really know what it was and what to do with it.
• The color of the car also would symbolize the wealth that Daniel has, I want the car to be white since it is hard to keep that color clean and being around the peasants it would not be clean.
• I would also want Daniel suit to freshly ironed without wrinkles and have him wear formal dress shoes and white socks.
• The car should take up a large portion of the stage (Life sized possibly) to show the large significance that this scene has
• Also, want to show how small Desiree is and use that to symbolize her innocence.
• I would have the car facing the audience so that they feel like they are in the forest as well and have Desiree come up from the side to further give the indication that she didn't see the car crash but merely heard it.
• When the peasants come along to see the crash I would want that to be the moment where sound reenters the scene.
• Keep Desiree's singing but have it be very quiet, and unsure of what she is doing.
• Show her caring nature
• Don't want to add music and keep it quite to show the severity f the situation. Want Desiree to be the one that decides when it is right to bring the audio elements back into the scene.
• Another thing that I might do is to have some of the peasants with lamps come down the aisles from the audience
• Play on the part where it says they come from multiple directions.
• I would also change the colors of the lights,
• Cool tones at night to go with peace, water, tranquility
• Harsh yellows and reds of the flames and candles to show the blood, danger, etc. of the crash
• Another way to add some drama would to add smoke to that car and have Desiree cough once or twice to show the rush for her to check on the man and start to imply that danger of being with him.

7

• "Here, take this knife. Strike hard, strike deep...In confusion, she let the knife fall from her hand. she ran." (pages 155-157)
• How to get the importance of the scene through to the audience.
• SPlit the stage in half
• One half is Desiree in her room
• Other half is Daniel laying in his bed.
• Lights down on Daniels side while the gods are present.
• I want to set the room that Desiree is in almost exactly like her home back in the village.
• Have the gods slowly come in along with a mist covering the floor?
• Have the Gods change their costumes to ones that look like they are about to go into battle.
• Really show the audience that the Gods are angry 
• Would have a physical transformation go on with Desiree
• As lines are being read I would have Agwe and Papa Ge start to get closer to Desiree, eventually cutting off the audience view of her (the smoke will help with this too).
• Use this moment to bring in some of the more fairytale elements from the book. 
• Put a back projection of Papa Ge's eyes, and do some flashes to Daniel laying with her back in the house to show a corruption fo, Desiree. 
• Change Desiree's dress to an all-black gown.
• Put the black dress over her old one
• Pull Desiree's hair back into a braid (wig)
• When Desiree "wakes" remove the Gods and the Smoke, turn the back projection off. 
• As Desiree walks along the stage to Daniels side, her lights go off.
• Daniels lights are up in blue and purple tones to show that it is still night. 
• Use Desiree's body to show a physical conflict going on inside her. Trying to fight and not kill Daniel.
• As Desiree gets closer have the lights turn more red and orange to show a blood sunrise.
• When Desiree drops the knife and runs the black dress falls from her
• Agwe and Pape Ge go and grab both the knife and the dress before walking off stage 
• Show they are losing their control over her.
• 
  

9

• "I have trained you. I have talked to you. I have driven all thoughts of heathen gods and their foolish ceremonies from your head. How is it that this morning you speak like an ignorant peasant?" "Monsieur le Patron," the woman said...I dare not challenge the gods! What if, when we throw out the mud, we let the gold slip into the river?" (pages 124-125)
• How to get the importance of the scene through to the audience.
• I would want to have Gabriel standing on a slightly raised platform (or use force perspective) 
• Make him look like he has more power.
• Make him closer to the Gods (competing for power)
• I would have Mathilde in neutral colors just like the peasants were to shoe her connection with them. 
• Have Gabriel in a white suit to demonstrate his power
• I would have the weather change form a sunny day to rain to show the anger of the gods
• especially Agwe
• Another thing that I would do is have Desiree look more like a child to show her uneasiness, and that Mathilde is the one doing the fighting for Desiree. 
• As Gabreil gets 

Notes for Paper 1 Questions

• Question 7
• Scene - When Desiree Finds Daniel in the Car
• Where her life starts to change
• Going from an innocent little girl who only took care of her family to growing up and falling in love.
• Changing to desire and go on an adventure
• Change the lighting to show the change (emotionally) that Desiree had
• Use some of the monologues to show her thoughts and inner workings demonstrate how she changes
• Where is the car placed?
• Want to draw on the moment where Desiree touches Daniels chest in the book 
• Really get specific and how the audience would be able to see the change happening. 
• Question 1
• The scene when Desiree is dead (Lucifus throws her body away) 
• Use the same dynamics the author uses in the book
• Show the dirty ground 
• Back projection of the castle and show the dangerous storm that is going on outside
• Bring Agwe in to show his rage
• Watching how Lucifus carries her and his growing anger
• Question 6
• The scene where Desiree goes to the Voodoo ceremony with Mama Euralie
• Four gods on an elevated plane to show their high status
• Desiree kneeling to show her status ad that she serves them 
• Adding elements of fear 
• Have to talk about what actually makes the scene a climax.
• The climactic moment when Desiree gets removed from Daniels room 
• When Desiree realizes he is getting married to Andrea
• The Gods - Talk about where the gods were placed to show status or perhaps why they are not there.