IA Oral Presentation Rough Draft 2/11/9

• Book Information 
• “The book that I did my adaptation on was…” 
• Krik? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat 
• It is… 
• A collection of short stories inspired by the history of Haiti and Danticat's personal experiences. 
• Stories Chosen for AD-APT-ATION 
• “From Danticat's selection, my group decided to take… for our adaptation”
• Children of the Sea 
• 1937 
• Features from the Epilogue 
• Characters 
• “While there were a plethora of options my group focused on…” 
• I played Josephine / the girl in Children of the sea 
• 2 Groupmates were Manman and the boy from Children of the sea 
• Settings 
• “There were two basic setting locations I chose to focus on, there were…” 
• Haiti 
• Prison - 1937 
• Small home -1937/Children of the Sea 
• Ocean - Children of the Sea  / On the boat - Theme of Separation. 
• Analysis of text 
• General 
• “Within the text, we were provided with…” 
• Many man v.s self-conflicts 
• Man v.s family conflicts 
• Social issues 
• Equality dilemmas 
• Thematic events that altered the perception of characters. 
• Realistic fiction diary entries that propelled our understanding of Haiti and its struggles. 
• Main Themes 
• “Themes from out short stories included…” 
• Love - timeless waters and endless seas 
• Belief - the sun can no longer warm gods creatures (Vodoo religion being the Madonna and reason why Manman was arrested. Coming to terms with what was real magic and what wasn't.) 
• Leaving/Separation 
• Death of family and loss of a lover. Both physically in that the boy leaves and that he dies in the end while she continues on alone. 
• Conflicts 
• Confinement (Man v.s Self) 
• Being alone and unable to get Manman back and get the boy home to her
• Understanding her mother and her “flight” 
• Discovering her character 
• Understanding what she was feeling 
• Having to stay in Haiti, no mention of even the thought of leaving. 
• Interesting due to the preservation of that hope to leave in many of the other stories, also this one but we removed it in order to make it seem like she wouldn’t have any ability to make it out. 
• Family conflicts (Man v.s Man) 
• Josephine and mother struggling to connect and bond 
• Learning about mother and her past 
• Historical awareness that we as readers felt. 
• Again feeling more connected to the character 
• The somber tone that was conceived through many lost family members, the death of loved ones 
• Learning about a brutalized group and feeling those waves of anger and sadness and helplessness through the tone o the text and keywords/phrases 
• “The sun can no longer warm gods creatures.” 
• Historical context 
• Awareness 
• What was going on with the Haitian government 
• The slaughters of thousands of people 'I saw from my spot on the Haitian side them chopping up my mother's body..."
• The danger that went along with Josephine leaving her house every morning 
• Beating the mother and starving here, 
• Josephine need to bring her food and repetition in telling her to eat it while she was there 
• Showing their care for each other. 
• Epilogue (Writers intent…) 
• Danticat's own opinions and stories 
• Helping envelope what the author's view was for my character. 
• Learning more about what stories were passed on and how children, daughters had to often be quiet heads down (translates into my body language on stage) 
• Foreshadowing 
• Circles (Timeless waters and endless seas) 
• Feel around with my character, while there is some there is the repetition of sitting and things coming back and forth back to the beginning of the scene and what she believes and her hopes. 
• Opening monologue sitting and ending sitting to bring back the themes of being stuck adn isolation. 
• Adaptation 
• What was the vision 
• Wanted to follow the journey of “the women who lived and died and loved again” 
• Generational ideas of how to solve problems 
• Boy escaping girls staying and going to visit mother 
• Mother being imprisoned and losing herself along the way. 
• USe Danticat's words to anchor our pieces, and keeping direct quotes as well as locations. 
• Using more creativity in our delivery of the scene and representation of the characters. 
• group size and drafting 
• Had a medium group and centered our characters o\around the stories that we believed the most in and felt that we connected with the most. 
• Preservation of text 
• Quotes/Setting
• Haiti and on the ocean
• Timeless waters and endless sea 
• Women who lived and died and lived again 
• The sun can no longer warm gods creatures 
• Lines for the boy in the boat 
• Creative freedoms \
• We decided to keep our scene pretty in line with the style of the book and have most of the piece in little vignettes. This did pose some challenges for us while 
• What we wanted to show to the audience 
• We wanted to be able to take the audience on a journey through diary entry or letter style performances and make sure that they understood the danger of the situation while keeping the tone very somber rather than very aggressive. 
• Stage 
• Black Box theater 
• Helped 
• More freedom without the bounds of curtains, side stages, or a strict end to the stage. 
• We were able to split the stage into three sections (One for each person) 
• This helped us differentiate what props we wanted to use and take advantage of our unique shaped performance area as well as implement our Periactoids so that we could get a feel for a difference between freedom and imprisonment that the mother had faced. 
• We also were able to use the stage to our advantage by staying close to that audience and that allowed up to have more gestures, clear body language and clear facial expressions. 
• For my character specifically I was staying small and rather in my space, I made sure that since Danticat had talked about how daughters were often portrayed small and obedient, I hunched down and didn’t make direct contact with audience members. I actually focused on looking up (above) so that I can avoid that act of dominance. 
• Using face to portray emotions with voice rather than boisterous hand motions. 
• Difficulties 
• It was hard to initially create a set that would take to the advantage of our stage and considering how flat leveled the stage is 
• Needed to make sure people were stationed at different heights 
• Mother always sitting and the boys chair actually had him sitting the highest. 
• As well as keeping the two children the boy and the girl on center stage and the mother who was further downstage to use the most of our stage and give the illusion of a sloped stage 
• Periactoids - 
• We used these to create the prison for the mother so that you could see she was enclosed somewhere and in the prison. 
• We also used these to make the stage smaller so that we could fill it with our small group better. 
• The periactoids also allowed us to make sure that we could keep the scenery to a minimum so that we could have the audience focus on the absence of materials, because of poverty, or being in prison, or being on the ship. 
• Evaluation of performance 
• My role 
• Josephine /The girl from children of the sea 
• Becoming the character 
• I took what Danticat mentioned in her epilogue 
• That’s what she specifically faced in her lifetime 
• Looking at the moments in each book where there was a change in a character 
• Josephine taking the Madonna 
• Admitting that she knew that it wasn’t really magic 
• When she is with the mother the idea that she had to put the wax and oil under Madonna’s eye because her mother had been imprisoned for so long that in order for her to have cried Josephine must have done it instead of her mother. 
• The ideas that Josephine and the girl are poor and starving 
• Not able to give a lot to the mother and in the condition of Haiti with nobody leaving their houses she can’t get much food or supplies so caving myself in to look smaller would make it appear that I was perhaps hungry or poor.
• Costuming 
• Josephine is the only character to survive and have the ability to change. So I made sure that I wore a color that stood out from my other group mates. While they were darker colors Josephine worn green so that you can see her fertility and her youthfulness. This also gave her a contrast to the audience that she is a character of importance. 
• My choices in voice 
• Josephine was a mix between a quiet obedient daughter with her mother but quite animated on her own with what she believed and wanted. I used some of our acting theorist's ideas to help 
• Stella Adler 
• Using emotion recollection but imagination more 
• Not having similar experiences building a wall between me and my character so taking something that gave me a similar emotion and using that to imagine being in a similar situation to Josephine 
• Uta Hagen 
• Answering the 9 questions about your character 
• Taking a look at what Josephine and the girl from the children of the sea might have in common and meshing them together to create my own character from that. 
• My movements 
• Staying in stage right 
• Using books to give the assumption of writing to my lover and holding the Madonna at times to show development or emotion for the mother and building a relationship. 
• I also got low with the mother to show a low point in our relationship and I hunched more at these portions to show a form of submission and keep my voice rather flat for most of the lines 
• Used emotion very little to show that there is still love there. 
• Lighting and Audio 
• Red lights for Haiti because of the bloodshed and violence 
• Blue for the ocean to represent some element of escape 
• Holding the props 
• Book 
• Education that the boy talked about “Studying till the end” “Our whole lives ahead of us” (MIne is last one) 
• Modonna
• A piece of mother and holding it at her death to symbolism understanding and coming together for her and living her legacy. But keeping it down during the beginning to show that she didn't really want to follow mother (Lived and died and lived again) 
• Cue sheet and script: 
• While my group worked very hard on the initial script I took a big charge in organizing my group's cue sheet adn making sure that we had the proper lighting and sound cues. I also made sure that our script was updated regularly with any changes that we had and made sure that our script still had the proper flow. I also organized to music arrangement. All these things helped me learn what goes on backstage and how much extra work goes into putting on any show no matter the scale. 
• Costuming (others)
• Kept everything neutral 
• Didn't want to have things standing out 
• (repeat)Show the deterioration of the mother by keeping her in grey and the life that Josephine had (Green) and the growth she would go through. 
• What did I learn 
• As I mentioned… 
• Learning about how much goes into the backstage and creation portion of a show 
• Learned about a different culture that isn't represented in the media as much as it should 
• Learning about designing your own show and the development of a character nobody has really done before. 
• What could I have improved/ be successful 
• I would have liked to be a little bit louder and animated. 
• Felt that I tried to have undertones that didn't show through 
• I also would have liked to make a little bit more planned for my blocking, I felt that I didn't move enough and was a little bit stiff and static. 
• I also know that my nerves had a piece in fic=guring out what I wanted to convey at each moment. 
• I would have liked to practice possibly with an audience a few more times to make sure that I was 100% ready and didn’t have so many nerves.