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.

I saw a play and took pics for proof

Activity Log

10/26/16: Went over script with partner, did some blocking and added more concise stage directions, as well as more actions for both characters in general. Friar Lawrence’s actions were modified to be more dynamic and reactive to Romeo’s lines in general. Not much acting was done.

10/27/16: Most of the blocking is done, some basic stage design was created and some imaginary props were added. Began work on memorization via rereading the lines and listening to recordings. We did one dry one (reading one) and decided that Johnny had trouble projecting his voice and I stuttered and spoke too quickly.

10/27/16: More individual work on memorization. Not much else.

11/1/16: Did a run with scripts and feedback. Most feedback consisted of: speak slower, make your movements more articulate and defined, move with purpose, accommodate and compliment Romeo’s actions better.

11/2/16: Color coded lines and blocks to define emotions per line/movement.