terms and me trying to define them

Biographical info about the author:

• Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Parents immigrated to to New York and left her and her brother to be raised by aunt/uncle
• Childhood was influenced by studying/storytelling/church
• Bilingual in French/Hatian Creole
• Started writing at 9, moved to Brooklyn @ 12 to join her parents and dealt with unfamiliarity via literature
• Lived in a mainly haitian community and didn’t understand racism until she went to college
• Wrote an essay about immigration and then wrote a short story which turned into her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory

Timeline for haiti’s history from independence to present day

• 1803: Haitians design a flag that turns the French flag on its side and removes the white band. They gain independence at The Battle of Vertieres
• 1804: On Jan 1, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines declares the plant Haiti (Ayiti in Creole) that means mountainous country
• 1806: Dessalines is assassinated
• 1807-20: Civil war in Haiti divides the country into the northern kingdom of Henri Christophe and southern republic of Alexandre Petion. Christophe’s army rebels and he commits suicide, letting Jean-Pierre Boyer reunify the country and become president of the entirety in 1820
• 1821: President Boyer invades Santo Domingo right after they declare independence from Spain. They control the island until 1844
• 1838: France recognizes Haitian independence in exchange for 150mil frances. They have to take out loans of 70mil francs to pay it off and gain international recognition. Most nations shun Haiti for ~40 years out of fear of causing unrest
• 1862: US grants Haiti diplomatic recognition by sending Frederick Douglass as Consular Minister
• 1915: President Wilson orders US Marines to occupy Haiti and establish the Haitian National Guard. Peasants resist and grow under the leadership of Charlemagne Peralt who then is assassinated in 1919
• 1934: US withdraws from Haiti
• 1937: Haitians living near the Dominican republic are massacred under the orders of Dominican president
• 1957: Duvalier declares himself president for life
• 1971: Duvalier dies in office and declares his 19 y/o son as successor
• 1972: Haitian boat people flee and land in florida
• 1976: widespread protest against restriction of the press take place
• 1970-80s: Baby Doc exploits intl. assistance and looks to invest in textiles. Unions are quickly destroyed
• 1980: 100s of HR workers, journalists, and lawyers are arrested and exiled
• 1983: Pope John Paul II visits Haiti and declares things must change
• 1985: numerous anti-govt demonstrations take place around the country and are unified under the event of four children being shot dead by soldiers
• 1986: widespread protest vs Baby Doc leads to the US arranging for him to be exiled to France and put General henri Namphy in his place
• 1987: a new constitution is overwhelmingly approved. General elections are cut short due to beginning with many people being shot dead soon after opening in november
• 1988: military controlled elections result in Leslie Manigat being installed as President in January. She is ousted by Namphy in 4 months who is ousted by General Prosper Avril in november
• 1989: Pres. Avril orders massive repression against political parties/unions/students/democratic organizations
• 1990: Instability is resolved with the election of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a parish priest
• 1991: A coup is attempted, but fails. They try again 8 months later and 1000+ people die.
• 1992-1995: political things happen that i dont really understand
• 1996: President Preval is inaugurated with a new govt forming under PM Rosny Smarth. They promise agricultural production, administrative reform, and economic modernization.

Haiti’s fight for and gain of independence

• Napoleon tried to use Haiti as a place to get slaves from and they revolted starting in 1791.

Toussaint L’Ouverture

• A former slave gifted with natural military genius and took control of the rebel slaves in 1791.
• Jan 1802, he agrees to a ceasefire and retires to his plantation in 1803 and gets arrested and taken to a dungeon in the French Alps before being tortured and dying in April

Boukman

• A slave in Haiti and one of the more visible leaders of the revolution. He conducted a religious ceremony at the Bois Caiman where a freedom covenant was made. This ceremony a catalyst for the uprising that marked the beginning of the revolution

1937, Dominican massacre

• Trujillo was determined to dominate the entirety of the island and ordered a massacre on 15,000~20,000 Haitians on the dominican side of the massacre river.

Rafael Trujillo

• Dominican politician and soldier, ruled the Dominican Republic from Feb1930-May1961, when he was assassinated. He had a dangerous personality cult and ordered the massacre of 1937

Voodoo religion

• The belief in a distant/unknowable supreme creator known as Bondye who doesn’t care about Human affairs but his spirit servants Ioa do, and they care about a lot of human stuff so they worship the Ioa.

Duvalier (Papa Doc)

• Used a cult of personality to help his rule. Was a physician prior to election and frequently ran and won in unannounced elections before taking the title “President for Life” in 1964 before naming his son his successor on his deathbed.

Tonton Macoute

• The Macoute was a special ops unit in the Haitian military created by Papa Doc in 1959 and were named after a Haitian myth of a bogeyman that kidnapped and punished bad children and put them in in a sack and eat them for breakfast later.

Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc)

• Papa Doc’s successor and son, lived an extremely lavish lifestyle while most of his country suffered from extreme poverty. His strong anti-communist stance helped his relations with the US. He was forced to flee to France after rebellion in 1986.

Krik? Krak! notes

Children of the Sea

• There are two people in love and one of them seems to be lost at sea
• One of them is escaping from haiti
• The female narrator seems to be suicidal in a sense
• Their parents disapprove of the relationship
• Some group makes parents sleep with their children of the opposite sex
• The male was part of a radio station that got attacked by the same group
• The father is very afraid of them
• Someone gives birth to a baby. The boat has 3 cracks in it and no more food
• The mother is very hopeful
• group=macoutes?
• The baby might have been born still
• The girl is definitely suicidal
• The baby’s mother was raped by many soldiers and her brother was arrested for moral crimes. She throws the baby and herself overboard. She’s 15
• The girl is kinda spiritual
• The boy is forced to throw his letters in the sea
• They accept they will be apart, and he’s most likely dead.

draft 2

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the character of Friar Lawrence is extremely pivotal to the plot. His dual nature and personality is a key element to the plot, as his twin morals impact the entire outcome of the play. While Friar Lawrence does display two major conflicts throughout the play. The more prominent one would be his choice between if he ought to decide to act morally incorrect but chance saving the city and ending the feud, or if he should choose to remain faithful to his ideals but risk plunging Verona into even more violence and chaos.

In addition to this life threatening decision, Friar Lawrence’s other display of duality lie within his coexisting beliefs in both science and religion, two concepts that are known to frequently contradict each other. However, his opening monologue from Act 2, Scene 3, illustrates something that isn’t contrast—but isn’t collaboration—through the frequent juxtaposition of flowers and morals:

“Within the infant rind of this weak flower,

Poison hath residence and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;” (2.3.23-29)

These frequent displays of comparison between virtues and herbology provides us with an interesting view into the perspective of the friar. While he is a man of the cloth, and a highly respected one at that, he isn’t a traditional priestly figure, one who tries to accept both walks of thought but still has to struggle with the consequences of doing so. He does manage to find parallels between these two schools of thought, but they don’t stop him from being constantly reminded of how he is meant to commit himself to one philosophy regarding life, which in turn causes the dissonance between his two mindsets regarding the situation of the young lovers.

As an actor, I tried to portray his internal conflicts through body language and facial expressions using influence from my own prior experiences and emotions, as well as adding inflections and emphasis to some words when speaking. Due to Shakespeare’s notorious lack of stage blocking in his writings, I used the script to determine how I thought characters would speak and move based on their lines. Because of this, I thought of Friar Lawrence as a character that would not make his uncertainty obvious through his dialogue, and more through his movement and expressions. My way of trying to demonstrate this was where I tried to show that every movement was performed and executed with slow and wise caution, something I tried to contrast to the dynamic and energetic being I envisioned Romeo would be during his rush to beg the Friar to perform the secret marriage. Some of the actions I did were to clasp my hands while speaking, as I associate that motion with elderly wisdom, or to tilt my head as if I were spending a lot of thinking energy on trying to comprehend and determine how to respond to Romeo’s requests. While my partner was not wildly vivid, he was lively enough for me to feel as if I were making a large enough contrast between fast youth and slow age.

Aside from these thoughtful motions, I choose to show his inner clash via my speech. While I didn’t follow the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare wrote in, I decided to place extra emphasis on a few keywords to help the audience take note of the Friar’s more prominent dual beliefs, which, like I believe Shakespeare intended, was meant to be noticeable for the audience so they would associate the character with being at a constant crossroads. This mostly took place during the opening monologue—which we cut down for balance—where I chose to stress certain words based on how they contrasted with other words from the lines before and after. For example, I enunciated the words light and night in, “The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,/Check’ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light,” (2.3.1-2) to bring the contrast of dark and dawn into prominence for the audience to take note of.

In addition, I used my previous experiences and emotions from that situation to influence the way I wanted to show how Friar Lawrence would react. Similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet, I was a bystander to two friends in a relationship that I didn’t necessarily agree with. And like the Friar, I was forced to weight the various positives and negatives that would arise, while also having to choose between two mindsets on what I thought was right. My approach to this event was to try and stay relatively neutral on the emotional front, so as to not distress my friends, and to make decisions that would hopefully benefit everyone involved. However, while I was able to tap into this to influence how I acted the role of Friar Lawrence, it also led to my acting to come off as mostly disinterested and almost completely devoid of emotion at times. This could be partly attributed to performance anxiety, but I believe that it was mostly due to this form of method acting as to why.

essay first draft

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the character of Friar Lawrence is extremely pivotal to the plot. His dual nature and personality is a key element to the plot, as his twin morals impact the entire outcome of the play. As an actor, I tried to portray his internal conflicts through body language and facial expressions using influence from my own prior experiences and emotions. While Friar Lawrence does display two major conflicts throughout the play. The more prominent one would be his choice between if he ought to decide to act morally incorrect but chance saving the city and ending the feud, or if he should choose to remain faithful to his ideals but risk plunging Verona into even more violence and chaos. In addition to this life threatening decision, Friar Lawrence’s other display of duality lie within his coexisting beliefs in both science and religion, two concepts that are known to frequently contradict each other. However, his opening monologue from Act 2, Scene 3, illustrates something that isn’t contrast—but isn’t collaboration—through the frequent juxtaposition of flowers and morals:

“Within the infant rind of this weak flower,

Poison hath residence and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;” (2.3.23-29)

These frequent displays of comparison between virtues and herbology provides us with an interesting view into the perspective of the friar. While he is a man of the cloth, and a highly respected one at that, he isn’t a traditional priestly figure, one who tries to accept both walks of thought but still has to struggle with the consequences of doing so. He does manage to find parallels between these two schools of thought, such as when he refers to how both eukaryotic and prokaryotic forms of life are able to contain and be influenced by good and evil powers. Unfortunately, these parallels do not stop him from being constantly reminded of how he is meant to commit himself to one philosophy regarding life, which in turn cause the dissonance between his two mindsets regarding the situation of the young lovers. As a man of faith, he knows he should choose against marrying them in secret. But, as a man who strives for what he perceives as the greater good, he also wishes to have them wed, even if in secret. During his entire conversation with Romeo, Friar Lawrence first presents himself to the younger male as a wise monk who preaches piety to his confidante. And yet, even though he chides him for his foolish love and advises against hasty action, he can’t help but soon switch to thinking of helping the star crossed lovers as well as the city. As I’ve already mentioned, I attempted to portray this hidden contrast by placing emphasis on my speech, as well as body language and facial expressions. Due to Shakespeare’s notorious lack of stage blocking in his writings, I used the script to determine how I thought characters would speak and move based on their lines. Because of this, I thought of Friar Lawrence as a character that would not make his uncertainty obvious through his dialogue, and more through his movement and expressions. My way of trying to demonstrate this was where I tried to show that every movement was performed and executed with slow and wise caution, something I tried to contrast to the dynamic and energetic being I envisioned Romeo would be during his rush to beg the Friar to perform the secret marriage. While my partner was not wildly vivid, he was lively enough for me to feel as if I were making a large enough contrast between fast youth and slow age. Aside from these thoughtful motions, I choose to show his inner clash via my speech. While I didn’t follow the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare wrote in, I decided to place extra emphasis on a few key words to help the audience take note of the Friar’s more prominent dual beliefs, which, like I believe Shakespeare intended, was meant to be noticeable for the audience so they would associate the character with being at a constant crossroads.

Thesis statement v1

Friar Lawrence's double morality impacts the entire outcome of the play. I attempted to portray these inner conflicts through body language and facial expression influenced by my own prior experiences and knowledge.

Stuff about "Warriors Don't Cry"

• POV: Melba Patillo Beals, one of 9 black students who were to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas as part of an effort to induce integration.
• Beals suffered a lot of death threats, physical/verbal attacks, and hatred, all due to racism.
• At the age of 12, Brown vs. Board of Ed happens, but she doesn’t see any change.
• She and other black students sign up to go to Central High School.
• On the first day of school, her mom sends her by car and they get attacked by a mob but escape unharmed. Her parents put her on lockdown and while she wants to go to her old school, her grandma tells her not to give up
• 20 days after, they all go to school but are forced to leave as the mob broke through the barricades and were about to attack
• The next day, President Eisenhower announces his intent to use force to stop anarchy and enforce the law. The 101st Airborne Division arrive in Little Rock, and Melba’s guard is Danny.
• Danny protects her when someone tries to throw acid in her eyes
• Norwegian Reporter Mrs. Jorumn Rickets wants to foster understanding between both groups. It doesn’t work out.
• One day Melba gets attacked and held under scalding water in the showers
• Mrs. Bates’ newspaper gets financially ruined by white people, a State Attorney is threatening all NAACP officials in the state
• Dec. 17, one of the students Minnijean gets cornered by white boys and throws hot chilli on two of them out of self defense and gets suspended.
• When she returns, she gets a bucket of soup poured on her by a boy and attacked by him, and a fight starts up. She gets expelled and three white students get suspended. NAACP sets up a scholarship for her at a HS in NY
• Melba nearly gets cornered by her main bully Andy but a white boy named Link gives her his car keys and she gets out. They become friends. Melba learns he’s empathetic towards black people because of his dying black nanny Nana Healey.
• Apr. 16, a new judge replaces the judge for the Little Rock integration lawsuits.
• Melba’s mom loses her job because she won’t remove her daughter
• Segregationists try to prevent graduation happening, but Ernie (the oldest), graduates on May 27.
• May 29, the nine tour the northern states and get treated as heroes/celebrities while the integration efforts continue to deteriorate.
• Governor Faubus shuts down all of the high schools in LR to stop them from attending school.
• Melba’s grandmother dies, and next year the NAACP arrange for all the students to go to different schools across the states, with Melba going to California and staying with a nurturing white family
• She eventually goes to SFSU and graduates, has failed relationships with a guy named John and loses friendship with Link, has a daughter named Kelli, and goes to a journalism school.

A filmed scene and my review of it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJpKfG9hzbs

I’m somewhat unsatisfied with how I did. Obviously I’m not expecting myself to act on a level surpassing Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Hanks or whatever, but I don’t think I did “well” either.

What went right? A few things. I think I was pretty good at projecting my voice, although it definitely came off as bland and boring sometimes. Loudness doesn’t really equate to emotion. Compared to the dry run we did last week, I think I did a little better at staying in character. I was still pretty stiff, but I fidgeted a bit less and tried to to move with the mindset of, “I’m a sagely, wise friar trying to advise an easily enraptured teenager who happens to be caught up in the middle of a very violent and bloody feud.”

Both my partner and I did get a little more physical with each other, making active attempts to physically interact. While I seriously appreciate his foresight to add some motions, I actually wasn’t ready for them to happen, so the first instance did catch me off guard, and my lack of skill in improv helped contribute to the awkward movement and unnatural positioning.

Compared to my partner, my movement was extremely stiff. While he seemed to move around with all the vigor and vitality of an overeager and lovesick teenager, I just seemed to stand around. On one hand, I could argue that this was me trying to create a contrast of calm wisdom, but realistically it was just me focusing way too much on trying to remember lines while trying to follow through a few actions.

I think if I could vocalize more emotions and just simply move more, I would do a lot better in portraying Friar Lawrence. As it currently is, I feel like all I’ve simply done was try to throw out lines and vaguely move around without any clear purpose or intent to my actions.

In terms of adapting literary devices, I feel like the scene is sorely lacking in that department, partly due to lack of our own consideration while adapting the scene.

For any future, similar projects, I think I’m definitely going to shoot a little more realistically instead of aiming too high like I did with this. Choosing a less monologue-heavy scene, and picking a more relatable character than the sagely and well-worded Friar Lawrence would probably help me get into character and memorize lines better next time. In addition to that, I really need to work on talking slower, but I think that’s just a problem that could be fixed just by speaking more in general, not just in the context of, “I’m acting out this scene, I need to speak much slower and rhythmically and audibly.”

Fall Play Review

As I’ve never seen any of Cheshire Academy’s plays before, and had only heard interesting (and negatively biased) stories regarding them, I went to go view The Dead with an optimistic mindset. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but I wasn’t expecting anything absolutely terrible.

The Dead itself is an odd story. Revolving around a group of friends, the first act features a lovely Christmas party where these friends engage in singing, a late drunken arrival, dancing, and cake. In a strange turn of events, however, the second act shows the aftermath of the party, culminating with the elderly host dying in her sleep, and then focusing on a married couple who discuss their reaction to the untimely death of the husband’s aunt, and argue on how the wife still retained latent feelings for a childhood friend from very long ago.

The actors themselves do a wonderful job, in my opinion. They portray their various characters in unique ways, and while I may be unable to remember the names of the characters, I could certainly describe how each played their own in such a distinct way. You could easily see how each character held different opinions or sentiments towards another. One prominent example was in how both Grace Greene and John Jiang were both regarded by Abby Zuckert’s character, where both attempted to offer her a hot bottle on her soon-to-be deathbed, and how she turned down her character’s sister but gladly accepted it from her loved nephew.

My biggest issue with this play was simply that I couldn’t find much...value in the story that was presented. While I found myself really enjoying how the actors were able to present unique personalities, I didn’t enjoy the story as much. It was hard to find a potential moral to the story that was presented, and the second half presented such a drastically different tone and experience from the first. If I were forced to come up with any sort of conclusion, it would probably be along the lines of, “The dead are dead, and we must learn to live on.”

Performance Log

11/9/16

• 2 groups went and performed today
• Advice they received
• Make actions clearer
• Enunciate more, articulate your words, don’t have them slur or blend together. Don’t mumble, but don’t overdo it either.
• Motions help show actions, make them more prominent
• Don’t just throw out lines, deliver them with meaning
• TALK SLOW
• Address your group partners because you’re having an actual conversation with them, but not as group partners, as characters from the play.
• Get committed to the part, use physical contact, think and move realistically, speak with conviction
• Don’t be afraid to touch other people. If Friar Lawrence thinks Romeo needs a pat on the shoulder, the Friar Lawrence is going to give him that pat.

11/10/16

• Stay in character, don’t fidget/stutter
• Enunciate more
• Staying in character isn’t just about facial expressions and speaking, it’s about your entire body.
• Know your lines
• You’re not Kathleen, you’re Friar Lawrence.
• Face the audience, don’t ever have your back completely turned to them
• Accommodate/mime flowers and a basket with your actions.
• Stop breaking character
• Work on vocalizing lines with rhymes and patterns, make them flow instead of just throwing them out.
• Reciting lines blankly is not staying in character
• Talk slower
• Stand to greet Romeo before you jump up and yell “GOD PARDON SIN!”, it will make it much less startling/surprising/disorienting to the audience
• Stuff to memorize
• The middle of some monologues
• The entire last one
• Work on visuals/facial expressions, don’t give poker faces the entire time
• Write physical/emotional reactions to your partner’s lines in your scripts to help with this
• Fidgeting makes you look less like the sagely Friar Lawrence and more like “actor in training who doesn’t really know what to say or do.”
• Be aware of each other’s presence on stage and make sure you’re not blocking the audience’s view of each other
• Don’t overplay emotions, make them realistic and not overdone or non-existent.
• Make it clearer to your identity and where you are, especially in the beginning of the scene. Avoid unnecessary confusion.

Misc. Notes:

• Overdoing emotions and expressions extends to miming props as well. Don’t make it look overdone or exaggerated because that reduces the realism.
• Don’t focus too much on the lines because that’ll reduce your actions and make you look less in character
• Missing a few lines *should* be a little bit okay so as long as it’s not too much or very important/relevant to the script/play.