Not Just A High School Production

Once On This Island is a famous musical. If you search Once On This Island on Youtube, there are 424,000 results. People from all over the world like this musical. This play was adapted from the novel, My Love, My Love, which is another adaption of the Little Mermaids. It narrates a journey of a girl, Desiree. Luckily, Once On This Island was reproduced in Black Box. Personally, though it still has some flaws, I think this was a successful production, either from acting or music perspective. It got several talented actors, such as Julia, Samantha, Charlotte… The whole team can even be called a “all-star cast”. However, since this is a musical, I will focus more on the music performance and other small but interesting points.

The musical indeed impressed me, and I think it was smart to accentuate the strengths and avoid the weaknesses. A good pit band is always necessary for a good musical. Through the whole performance, the pit band was doing fantastic. Especially, the change of instruments when scenes were changing brought audience more into the play. When the scene was sad, the flute just made the play more emotional. Personally, I think this musical was actually better than last musical, Spelling Bee. In Spelling Bee, there were more solos, however Once On This Island had more choruses and harmonies. In Spelling Bee, the solos were flawed. When one person was singing, if he made mistakes, it was obvious. Also, I don’t think actors in Spelling Bee are all good singers. However, Once On This Island, actors were actually all professional singers. Also, choruses and harmonies could better foil the atmosphere, and it can always hide the flaws a few singers have. One of the most impressive things in the whole musical was the bird tweets, the harmony. It was beautiful, and high vocals alternated with the low vocals. In short, music performance is the soul of a musical, and in Once On This Island, the good performance was actually a plus.

Another thing I want to talk about is the little details, include both interesting spots and some flaws. Firstly, Wiebka’s narration was creative. It was important to let the audience understand what was going on. Normally, there were not many people read the book, My Love, My Love before, so a narration was helpful. Also, this narration was pretty creative. Instead one person is talking on the stage, the puppet idea was more interesting and more understandable. In addition, there was a noticeable shortcoming in the musical. During the whole show, when there was a chorus, everybody should sing. However, there were a girl and a boy who never opened their mouths. This was usually not a good thing to do on stage. When I first performed on the stage, my teacher told me that: “when you are on stage, any movement will be captured by the audience, so behave properly.” The two actors were really noticeable, and this should not happen. Consequently, the narration idea was interesting, and the advantages in the musical actually covered the little weakness.

 In conclusion, the musical was an impressive production, either from acting and music perspectives. Though some little imperfections still existed, the whole thing was wonderful. Moreover, from Julia’s performance, I learned a lot. I hope after the musical, I can perform better in our own play. 

Once in a Tragedy

For this IB Internal Assessment project, my group directed a play which combined My Love, My Love and the Little Red Riding Hood, and I played the one of the protagonists, Desiree and the Little Red Riding Hood. Since planing in the classroom to acting in the theatre, this was a learning process for me. Personally, I can clearly see the difference in my writing skills, acting and theatre knowledge. 

From literary perspective, the adaptation showed the significant points for both of My Love, My Love and the Little Red Riding Hood. My Love, My Love is already an adaptation of the Little Mermaids, but the setting is in modern time. Desiree was the protagonist, who I think was the embodiment of the little mermaid. She is a poor peasant, but she falls in love with the son of a rich businessman, Daniel. To chase her true love, she travels far to a big city, where she does not belong to. Sadly, the story is a tragedy; it ends at Daniel’s abandonment and Desiree’s death.  In the story, gods also play important roles. Desiree’s journey is also a fight between gods. The goddess of love, Erzulie always helps Desiree. However, Papa Ge is always trying to destroy Desiree and her love. To show the connection between My Love, My Love and the Little Red Riding Hood, we actually made Papa Ge become the wolf in the story of the Little Red Riding Hood. Then Desiree was also the Little Red Riding Hood. We followed the ending in My Love, My Love. We actually made it sad, because we want to show that “That is how reality work, you are not live in a fairy tale.” In short, we combine two distinct stories— one is a novel, one is fairytale, but we still focus more on My Love, My Love. 

Personally, I did improve a lot during the process. Instead of everybody worked on his own, my group preferred to do team work. Basically, from writing scripts to acting, everyone in our group were engaged in every part of our project, so we could learn about every process we went through. When we wrote scripts, we were picking up some lines from the original text. During this process, I was able to share many of my opinions about the plots, and this actually made me understand the book deeper. Writing scripts was actually interesting.  I always wrote simple sentences while others were writing down bunch of beautiful SAT sentences. Therefore, this actually helped my writing skills. Then my biggest progress was actually the acting part. I know I was a really bad actor. At first, it seemed that I could not stop smiling when I was on the stage. I thought that was actually an intuition, because I was not aware of that. Thus I always made the tragedy to a comedy. However, because of much practicing, I finally got over this. Moreover, I could not express the feelings to the audience correctly, even though I knew the emotions. About the acting part, other members in my group gave me much help. We discussed the emotions together, and sometimes they showed me how to act. In addition, I also learned how the whole theatre works. I came to the class with a little theater knowledge, but after the past month, I know Enunciation, Upstage, and downstage. I know when I talk on the stage I should face to the audience. Consequently, from playing the role, Desiree and the Little Red Riding Hood, I actually can see a big difference of my understanding of the story and acting. 

In conclusion, I did achieve a big progress in the past month. At first, playing Desiree was a huge challenge to me. I think we had a fantastic idea which was to combine My Love, My Love and the Little Red Riding Hood together, and I want to show the best to the audience. During this time, I learned much about writing scripts, acting on the stage and the whole theatre process. This was really an amazing and helpful experience. 

Reality or Fairytale

Randeep Hooda once said that:“ Theatre gives you wings as an actor.” However, Black Box does not only give me wings as an actor, but also give me a chance to be a director or a playwright. Since our group came up with the idea, which is to combine Little Red Riding Hood and My love, My Love, we always try to make the 20-minute play more creative. During this process, we hope the idea that bringing Little Red Riding Hood into this story could give the audience a new way to look at the story. 

Firstly, to make our scene creative but original, as my group is focusing on the original text, we are also trying to add more elements from Little Red Riding Hood to our performance. From acting and staging perspective, we are focusing on the original story. We interpret Desiree’s story. However, we also wear costumes from Little Red Riding Hood. For example, in our scene, Desiree is also Red Riding Hood, so I will wear a red cloak. Moreover, Papa Ge is also the wolf, so Leo wears a wolf costume. Because the two stories are similar, most of the plots are the same, except the ending. Interestingly, the end is my favorite part. It does not only point out the sad ending of Desiree, but also highly summarize the whole story. “That is how reality work, you are not live in a fairy tale.” We could’ve designed a happy ending, but we did not. We hope to bring the audience a new perspective to look at both of the stories. In the story, Desiree won Papa Ge, but she was defeated by the reality. Erizulie/the hunter could not always save her. This is how the world works. Also, we tend to show that Daniel is a nice person, instead of a jerk, because we want to highlight that Daniel does nothing wrong. In short, the scene is adapted from My Love, My Love, but it is also a part of Little Red Riding Hood. 

Secondly, I, myself also make a big progress on theatre, even though I still have problems to work on. In this scene, I play the main role, Desiree or Red Riding Hood. Compare to my performance in Romeo and Juliet, I improved a lot, but this was still a big challenge for me, because honestly I knew I was not a good actor. However, my partners help me a lot; they teach me how to show the emotions appropriately. For example, I have a line: “I’m here. I’m here to keep you safe! ” I should act sad, because Daniel is so sick. However, every time I said the line, I was speaking with smile (sometimes I did not even realize that). This was my biggest problem, but my group was teaching me everyday. Finally, I think I did act sad today. Nevertheless, I still have to work on memorizing the scripts and acting sorrowful. 

In conclusion, the whole idea of the scene is interesting, but how to show it to the audience is a problem. We have a good idea, and we try to combine My love, My love and Little Red Riding Hood creatively. However, the acting part is still a big challenge for me. Whereas, it is good that I can improve everyday.