Life, Pain, Love, Grief, Hope and Faith

Once on This Island is a musical based on the book My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy.  Ti Moune is a young peasant girl, who falls in love with a grand homme. The show is phenomenal and I am proud of everyone involved.  I experienced the show in many ways.  From blocking to costumes, to hair, to makeup, to props, to cues and many last minute surprises, I loved this show and everyone involved.  I am sad to move on.  The week leading up to the show was the smoothest show week I have experienced.  It is a difficult show that involved a high level of participation and solid performance from everyone.  I am thankful for everyone’s participation especially because people were sick and we suffered from snow days.  In addition, the crew was the most involved I have ever worked with.  They were so creative and I refuse to think what the stage would have looked like without their ideas and beautiful execution.  However, I wish we could have run the show with lights a few more times before opening night.  The lighting and sound cues bothered me.  They caused problems in all of the performances.  This most likely did not impact the audience (except when the thunder didn’t sound-twice), but as the person relying on the lights to give cues to the actors, I thought the lighting could have been more reliable.  More times than should have been necessary, I had to speak over the headset asking about the cue.  Furthermore, the lights came up early a few times and had a few added blackouts. I know from experience that the technology is not always reliable, but a few more rehearsals may have allowed us to adapt.  

Another fear I had was whispering.  With many people involved, time off of the stage and mics, I feared more whispering would occur.  This was only the case on Sunday, which is very impressive.  The only major problems were the mics being muted, and people occasionally forgetting lines. Neither of these seemed to be very apparent to the audience.  I picked up on several other tiny mistakes, but I was probably only one of two or three people watching who noticed.  

I have heard many reviews of the show, both of biased parents and students and faculty.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the show.  As the stage manager, I am most proud of the look of the show.  I organized the majority of the costumes, including coming up with costumes the day of, and heard that many people found the vibrant colors of the show to be aesthetically pleasing.  It was difficult to organize the costumes because they needed to match in a way that did not really match.  They had to seem of similar status for the peasants, but the pieces could not fit perfectly together. I walked a tightrope of what looked good and what looked strange, but it seemed to work out.  

Overall, the show was one of my biggest successes and I am going to miss going to the black box everyday to work with the amazing cast, crew, and pit of the show, but I know the show will always be a part of us.  (Both in the memories and the songs we will never get out of our heads:))

My Love, My Doctor Oral Presentation First Draft

1. My Love, My Love or the Peasant Girl is a Caribbean retelling of the The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson.  The story involves many dualities; earth and water, love and death, and rich and poor.  The main storyline revolves around Daniel and his love for both Ti Moune and Andrea.  Ti Moune saved Daniel from the car crash and has fallen deeply in love with him.  In addition, she thinks he remembers her and loves her back.  Daniel does not remember her, but starts to fall in love with her gradually until Andrea returns from France.  Here, Daniel leaves Ti Moune for Andrea.  
1. add more background
1. depends on what comes up below

      → mention musical here

2. Our group chose to focus on the dualities of love and death and rich and poor.  We chose to recreate the fact that Daniel and Ti Moune are from different worlds.  Our adaptation transformed the setting into an insane asylum where Daniel is the doctor and Ti Moune is his patient.  This is supposed to represent the difference between rich and poor. The themes of love and death were more loosely translated into the idea Ti Moune has of saving Daniel from the car crash. In our scene, Ti Moune is in the car crash, but she thinks that Daniel was, like he was in the book.  The Gods were interpreted into another patient- an imaginary one in Ti Moune’s head- who has multiple personality disorder.  This aspect was inspired by the parts in the book where the Gods all speak through Papa Ge.  We chose to show that Daniel could not see the Gods because they are imaginary rather than showing that Daniel does not believe in them.  We did add a scene where the Gods seem to speak to Daniel as if they are manipulating him like a pawn.  It seems like they are interacting, but he does not see them.  This is the only part where the Gods, Ti Moune and Daniel are all in the scene.  However, they are all speaking separately with no interactions.  The final character is Andrea.  She only appears at the very end.  This suppose to represent that she just seemed to walk into Daniel’s life and took him.  We tended to lean closer to the musical here.  We made Andrea Daniel’s fiancee already. This added to the effect the marriage-or future marriage has on Ti Moune. Overall, we attempted to focus on Daniel and Ti Moune’s relationship.
1. add about Ti Moune’s obsession
2. add more about distinction of characters
3. add about Daniel’s slight fascination/temptation with Ti Moune
4. add about character name decisions
3. We attempted to make our staging simple.  The stage consists of a couch, a chair and a small table.  Daniel and Andrea enter from stage right and the Gods enter from stage left. Ti Moune is almost always on stage except for the very beginning and she enters during a blackout.
1. talk about blackouts
2. add about lighting and sound effects
3. scene change
4. discuss fight
4. I played the Gods and Andrea.  Andrea played a large role in our storyline, but as far as challenging myself as an actor, she was not very difficult.  Andrea only has a few lines.  My biggest struggle came from learning to portray the Gods the way I wanted to/imagined them.  The Gods are very different from each other.  Each has complex characteristics and then they were combined.  Apart from learning 4 characterizations, I also learned how to switch between the gods.  The gods have an interesting relationship amongst each other in the book and I was particularly interested in portraying this.  The Gods were supposed to come across as comedic characters.  Each God has lines that pertain to the others and they tend to bicker with each other.  I was attempting to create the illusion that they have known each other for a very long time- so almost like an old married couple.  I spent lots of time trying voices and movements that got my point across and were comedic without looking ridiculous.  While I did play a multiple personality, imaginary patient, I did not was to seem ridiculous and this was difficult due to the God's relationships with each other.  As I became more comfortable with my lines, I started to explore what I could do with the characters.  
1. Agwe- sort of a fatherly figure, he looks out for Ti Moune
2. Erzulie- ditzy, dramatic, all about love no matter what
3. Asaka- motherly figure, wants the best for everyone, wants everyone to “play nice”
4. Papa Ge- sarcastic, droll, wants Daniel dead, it is a solution that benefits him

5) talk about once I did video.

1. how well I portrayed the gods
2. was it successful?
3. did I manage to keep the gods straight in the video?

6) need to talk about 5 first

1. was our overall performance successful?
2. what improvements would I make?
3. last thoughts...

Quotes:

Book:

Musical: “Asaka, Mother of the Earth. Agwe, God of Water. Erzulie, Beautiful Goddess of Love and Papa Ge, Sly Demon of Death.”

Our Script: “I’m the only one who can make you well.” Pick God lines to talk about.

"Ridiculous, Interesting, and More Amusing Than Mangos!"

      Our scene has many similarities with the book, but we changed many things slightly creating a creative interpretation.  For example, we took Ti Moune’s obsession with Daniel as our main similarity/interpreted aspect.  We emphasize how ridiculous her level of care for him is.  In our version, Ti Moune was the car crash victim.  This changes the storyline, but it makes our interpretation of Ti Moune’s love more prominent.  It shows our audience how irrational Ti Moune’s obsession is.  Even though she is the one that is hurt, she thinks she needs to take care of Daniel.  In addition, he acts like a normal doctor to her, meaning that he treats her like he cares about her health, but not in a flirty way.  She takes his actions as a doctor to mean more than they do and thinks that he forgot about her. She reminds him of the plot of My Love, My Love, but this is not what actually happened. This is the equivalent of when Ti Moune sees Daniel at the Hotel Beauxhomme and Daniel does not know she saved him.  She reminds him assuming he will fall instantly in love with the girl who saved him because they had a “connection”. 

       Our scene recreates the storyline of My Love, My Love through the main plot and the story in Ti Moune’s head.  Some of this should be evident in our scene and other parts are more subtle.  Another aspect that we took from the book is the way the gods all speak through Papa Ge’s body.  In our scene, the gods are the same person- a person with multiple personality disorder.  This patient shows up to give Ti Moune advice, but similar to the book, they end up arguing with each other.  Making the gods one person, adds a comedic character. The gods, especially Papa Ge, make sarcastic comments to the other gods. Each god also has a god complex, meaning they think they are better than the other gods.  This is comedic too because the gods are the same person.  The gods add ridiculousness to the scene that adds to the irrationality of Ti Moune’s character.  The only other character who knows the plot of My Love, My Love, which Ti Moune irrationally thinks is true, is the gods.  The gods seem ridiculous and unreal showing the audience that Ti Moune is also crazy.  In other words, because the gods are unreal and believe that Daniel’s car crashed, while a sane character, like Daniel believes different, a false sense of what happened is created. This adds to the make believe ideas Ti Moune has, showing her obsession in a different light than the book.

      The gods, as mentioned above, are my biggest personal struggle.  It is difficult to portray a multiple personality disorder patient in a realistic way.  Even though I am an imaginary character and should not be completely realistic, I do have to seem somewhat real.  I cannot over-act because it will make the character ridiculous. However, if I do not act strange enough, it takes away from our message about being ridiculous and irrational.  In addition, under doing it will be weird in a scene where many of our lines are strange.  Furthermore, I struggle changing smoothly between the gods.  I am slowly making progress, but I still need to run it many more times to make the transitions more natural.  As Andrea, I think I am doing well. I need to work on cheating out a little more because I feel like I am always turned. My biggest problem with Andrea is going to be changing quick enough.  Overall, practice makes perfect.  

Photo: Google Images

Title: Once On This Island