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.