Blog Post _ Chose a scene to write about

3. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study which deals with despair and euphoria. How might staging, design and acting combine to register one of these experiences for an audience?

I would like to study the passage from pages 155-157, this is the scene where Desiree is told by Agwe to kill Daniel but cannot bring herself to actually commit the act. For this scene, I would have all the Gods there rather than what the book says (just having Papa Ge). I would make sure to change their wardrobe into something the resembles war more than the dresses and suits that I previously had mentioned that they were in. I would keep the lighting very dim, almost resorted to everyone just seeing shadows, I would, however, use lightning (A very common weather predictor) to make sure that there were flashes where you could see the anger for the Gods, these might be focused around lines such as “Strike hard, strike deep” (155) or “He has betrayed you-betrayed us all.” (155) I would make sure that Desiree looks very distressed to play on an element of madness and match her with the gods. When the morning came, I would have Desiree be slightly cleaned up but when she grabs the knife I would want to play on famous elements like the black swan transformation where she becomes Papa Ge, I would change her clothing and her hairstyle to be more “clean” and “polished” like death might be. For the set design, I would want to make the room look almost like a dungeon that could cause Desiree to go mad. I would want to include a small straw bed like she had at home and one window. When Papa Ge shows up I would want to play on the fact that he comes through the window again to ge desiree. I would also want Daniels room to get increasingly brighter with a red sunrise to show a growth of euphoria and adrenaline as Desiree is about to kill the man that she loves. I want to add a lot of lighting to this to show that she has some form of a high to her during this section because of al the anger that the gods had fed to her. This will help when she feels such sadness later in the scene. I would change the color of her eyes through contacts and make the background slightly more red as the sun rose to show the evil. When Desiree realizes that she is in love with Daniel I would have the set go back to normal and as she runs to go to the pool I would have her change back into a ragged dress and remove the contacts. This would need to be a quick change but I think that I would have a set change to outside so that I could show the point when Lucifus finds her by the pool to throw her out. One thing that I would want to change is actually to have Desiree keep the knife with her and use it in some way later. I think that this would be really strong for an element fo remembrance of what she almost did and maybe a reason that Daniel “doesn’t love her” anymore. I might even go as far as having the blade break and Daniel find a portion of it and she ahs the other, sort of drawing on the fairytale elements of cinderella. An element that I think I would add after is with the knife. I want to have Desiree take her broken piece of the knife and while she is with the vendors she uses a fire to bend the knife and make a bracelet, this would be important to show the chains that bind her to Daniel, and Daniel not having one shows that he doesn't feel the same. But in the scene I would want to show the elements that are seen in a hopeless hero story, something like Black Swan. As Desiree takes the knife and goes to kill Daniel, I would want to change the music so that there was a clear contrast between the soft music that goes on in the palace and the traditional music that the villagers played for the gods. For this music specifically, I would want to blend some of the traditional music for the gods (because I want to bring in elements of a transition to Papa Ge) and some modern erratic music to show a transformation. Another thing that I would want to do to show despair is directly after the scene, I would make sure that when Desiree is at the pool there is a projection of her with the red eyes, and turning into Papa Ge. I think that using a projection would allow the audience to further see the transformation that Desiree is going through at the current moment. I think that people sitting a little bit further from the stage may not be able to see the full extent of the transformation, because the way that I have it set up is that the transformation is small because the Euphoria that Desiree feels when she is angry is still not significant enough perhaps for everyone to see so using the projection will help feed some of the despair that Desiree feels. This will make the high seem more significant and the emotions for the low feel like they are even greater. I think that something else I would like to do to make the Despair that desiree feels is to first have the projection of Lucifus be a projection of Daniel and then when that element is ripped away from her it will seem even sadder to think that she so desperately wants Daniel to come to her, she doesn't really care how but when he doesn't and it is Lucifus to throw her out of that grounds it make the lows that she feels even lower for her. I want to change the red to cool colors like blue that represent sadness and that show a change of anger, and the fight that leaves Desiree's body. I also would want to write a second verse to the song that she sings to Daniel maybe something hat instead of her saying “you are not alone” saying something like “I am alone.” I would use this to get more emotion from the audience and show that Desiree is starting to give up and deep in her heart she begins to feel that Daniel might never love her the same again. While there is a plethora of other elements that I would like to touch on and explore (more sounds, lighting, costume detail, voice, set design) I am over 800 words.