BLog 10

Read After You Write

To tell you the truth, it was my first time to visit the writing center. Although, I know it is a really helpful place for me to improve my essay, and will give me lots of useful advises, I always find out excuse for myself to avoid the trip of writing center; I didn’t sleep well last night, so I need to take a nap during extra help; It was raining outside; It was such a long way from VDP to writing center. I would not have enough time to go there...... Therefore, going to writing center seemed to be an exotica to me. 

After I took out my essay. The first Ms Swift asked me to do is to talk about which part do I want to improve in my essay. I was shocked at first, not knowing what to answer, because usually is the teacher telling me where should I improve. With doubt in my head, I answered that: “ Can you help me to look over my essay?” Ms Swift smiles at me and asked me to read out loud my essay with her. Look at her genial smile I though, she might not seen any people like me before that coming to the writing center without any questions. I felt embarrassed. Luckily, I soon concentrated on reading my essay with Ms Swift. However, a new kind of embarrassment took over my face. I was impressed by how many grammar and spelling mistakes I made in the essay. The mistakes become so obvious while I was reading which made me think that I was such a fruitcake. I realized that reading is really helpful than just looking at the essays, because you can figure out how fluently your sentence is and fix your grammar and spelling mistakes by pronouncing them. Through the progress of reading, I fixed many mistakes by myself, and learned the proper way of using the grammar which helped me to improve the fluency and correctness of my essay.

Ms Swift also taught me the relationship between thesis and topic sentences. For example, In my thesis, I talk about how props, costuming, music, and body language help me to emphasize the importance of the foreshadowing, but I also talk about the analysis about how the lines I picked helped me to highlight the foreshadowing. She told me that it is really important to conclude what I talk about in the body paragraph in the thesis which will be clear to readers. There should be a connection between thesis and body sentences.

To sum up, from the trip to writing center, I find out that the best way to check my essay is to read it after I write it. In addition, I figure out the importance of connecting topic sentence with thesis and figure out how to do it. I also get advice on how to make the paragraph more formal and less blogging. Therefore, In the future, writing center may be the second common place I go besides VDP, because I feel that it is really helpful for me to improve my writing skills.

Fall production

A Story with Fun and Thoughts

Because of the lack of entertainment in campus, watching a play become a big celebration for me to get rid of all the pressures in school for a short period of time. Therefore, this Friday night I went to see the Play---Peter Pan.All I remembered of the story is that I have read it when I was only 7 years old and the ending of it is kind of tragic.

I didn’t notice that the story was written as a play version until I went to the play. Although I prefer music drama than the play, the funny action and jokes soon took over my attentions. John acted really well as a father; when he shouted, the whole black box was full of his voice. He performed perfectly as a father which make a big contrast with another character he acted which was one of the lost boys. He distinguish two character well by his motion and facial expression, although both of them are funny. When he was a father, he was serious and had no patient with his kids. When he was of of the lost boys, he acted silly and have many body language like laugh, and dance. In addition, I think that William acted really well as the dog. He did a great job on making the sound of a dog which seemed to be realistic to me. However, I was a little bit confused with the ending part of the play. I didn’t understand why after Hook died, Peter started to drive the boat and wear the hook. And I didn’t know what happened to all the lost boys, because there weren’t an ending for them. Captain Hook act really well, too. I was impressed by how she acted manly. I think the last scene which Peter was driven the boat is meaningful, but I can’t figure out by myself. 

Overall, I really enjoy the play. I hope it can do better in the winter. It is really a great show and I feel that it worth me to spend three hours of my weekend on it! 

Revised Draft #1

After I finished reading the play vision of “Romeo and Juliet”, I became interested in finding out why Romeo and Juliet have such a tragedy ending. Therefore, I decided to act out the play. In that way I can understand the play better by substitute myself into the story and feel the same way as the characters does. The play is about the love between two teenagers from two hostile family; because of the pullback from their family and their impulsive action, they finally died together and reconcile the anger from both family. I find out that the ignorance of the foreshadowing may be one of the reasons why the tragedy ending happened, so I want to dig deep into the foreshadowing part of the play and discover the start of this pitiful story. I and my partner Julie picked three scenes to present our ideas which were Act 2 Scene 2, Act 3 Scene 3, and Act 5 Scene 3. I acted as  Romeo though out the play. My partner Julie acted as Julie and Friar Lawrence though out the play. In the performance, we use music, varying volume, props and costumes to emphasize how important the foreshadowing is, and the how tragedy happened because Romeo and Juliet ignore the foreshadowing.

In the First Scene, which is Act 2 Scene 2, I use costuming and foreshadowing lines to show how Romeo ignores foreshadowing because of the extreme love.  I wear a black and white ancient shirt to represent  Romeo. The black color refers to the tragic  which Romeo and Juliet are going to face in the future. The white color refers to the pure love between Romeo and Juliet; the white color is too pure and clean that can not hold anything but love which shows that the love between them is extreme. That is why white color takes most of the place on the shirt; because of Romeo and Juliet’s extreme love, they can hardly pay attention to anything else including the foreshadowing. The lines I pick deliver an information that Romeo disregards his life, because he can do everything to stay with Juliet who is his lover. For example, here is one of the lines I choose from the book: “ My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” This sentence express a feeling that Romeo doesn’t care about his death but wanting the love from Juliet.  There is another line I pick with the foreshadowing words in it which is said by Juliet: “If they see thee, they will murder thee.” Although Juliet warns him about the risk of discovered by her family guards which is a foreshadowing of the future, Romeo doesn't want to leave, because he thinks his life is not as important as Juliet’s love.  Therefore, the costumes help me to point out the relationship between the foreshadowing and extreme love by distinguished colors. The foreshadowing lines help me to emphasize why Romeo ignore the foreshadowing.

I also added sound effect in the play to exaggerate the foreshadowing part of the lines. Therefore, it will form a contrast with Romeo’s extreme love. I and my partner choose a soft and smooth music as the background music which is called “Symphony no.101”. The romantic music fit perfectly with the situation that Romeo and Juliet talk about how they love each other. When they talk about the foreshadowing words, we change the music to “Ride of the valkyries” which is a rapid and depressed music. It indicate that something bad is about to happen. In my opinion, the trick to make a play realistic and entertaining is about the emotion you add into the play. In that case, I think music really help me to act emotionally, because the progress of acting with emotion will be a lot easier when you follow the flow of music. For example, when I play a romantic music, it is easy to speak with words like love and heart. With some facial expressions like smile and watching each others’ eyes while speaking, audience can feel the romance among those words bring out by the music. In addition, when the music is rapid and depressed, words like death and sorrow fit perfectly. It not only help me to manifest my emotion, but also give audience a psychological hint that something bad is about to happened. As the meantime, I will shake my hand and smile when the depressed music plays to show that I ignore my death, because it is not as important as Juliet’s love. Nonetheless, it is extremely important to pick the right kind of music to fit different situations. During the progress of the first scene, I and my partner look though almost hundreds of songs and listen to advice from the audience.

In the Second Scene, I highlight the ignorance of the foreshadowing by showing Romeo’s attitude between love and death by using the help of music and body languages. For example, Romeo said that :” Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say “death,” Much more than death.” In Romeo’s mind that banishment is a much crueler things than death. He prefer death than banishment because he can’t stand the pain of never see Juliet again. Nonetheless, Friar Lawrence remind him that “ Be patient, for the word is broad and wide.” which means that Romeo still have a chance to see Juliet again, if he be patient and wait for a chance. However, Romeo close his ears to those advice, because he is filled with sorrow of  leaving Juliet. He act emotional and impulsive in the play which perform as shouting at Friar Lawrence and crying while speaking. In addition, I act like cutting my head off with my hand when speaking the foreshadowing words like “death” to show that Romeo’s unconcern and ignorance of the foreshadowing. To him there is nothing as important as Juliet to him, even his life is meaningless compared to Juliet. I picked  “Dogs of War” as the song of this scene. It is a rapid and repressed music which fit the feeling of Romeo while he heard the news of his banishment. I act rudely to Friar Lawrence by argue with him loudly; also my face is distorted to show that Romeo lost control of his emotion; my hands are forced on my head with swelled veins which looks like trying to hurting myself to remit my regret and sorrow. This is also a refer to the cause of ignore the foreshadowing in the first scene, when I refused to listen to Juliet’s warning that her kinsman will find out and trying to kill me. Although Romeo live though the attack of Juliet’s kinsman, but he also get banished. I muttering the word “death” and  flapping my head in the end of Second Scene, which shows the foreshadowing to the last Scene. Romeo is not afraid and he is ready to die for Juliet.
In the Final Scene, I use props and body languages to show that the tragedy happened because of Romeo’s ignorance of the foreshadowing. After I walking into Juliet’s tomb, I stand in front of juliet and look at her face for a while; I take a deep breath and close his eyes. This action shows that Romeo has made the decision and is ready to die with Juliet. This action form a connection with the second scene which Romeo says to Friar Lawrence that he prefer death than be banished from Juliet. Therefore, when he sees the “death” of Juliet, he feel that his life is vapidness and meaningless, so die with Juliet become his best choice. I take out the drug which I use plastic bottle to replace with and said:” Here’s to my love.” When I say that my face turns from miserable to a big smile, because I know that I can stay with Juliet together forever and nobody can break up us again. With the smile I fall down beside Juliet. I think that while Romeo is drinking the drug, his mind is full of regret and happiness. He regret that he is too impulsive and emotional that ignore the foreshadowing because of the extreme love. However, he is also happy because that he knows that to die with Juliet is the only way he can stay with Juliet forever. After I fall down, Juliet wake up. She is surprise and joyful at first when she sees Romeo stays beside him, because she is afraid the drug given by father Lawrence may kill her or active shorter than she espect. However, she find out that Romeo died in front of her, by looking at the bottle holding by Romeo. Sorrow suddenly take over her face. She draw out the sword from Romeo; with spasmodic sobs she stab herself firmly and lays beside Romeo. Juliet called the sword “happy dagger” and ask it to let her die, because she knows that die with Romeo is her best choice which they can stay together forever. However, this tragedy happens because Romeo ignore the foreshadowing. If he be careful with the foreshadowing and listen to Friar Lawrence’s advice to be patient, he won’t kill himself by drug, he won’t kill Tybalt and got banish. He may live happily with Juliet. Unfortunately, drive by the extreme love, he became emotional and impulsive. The props in this scene help us a lot by revealing our emotion. For example, I talk to the drug bottle with smile on my face to express my feeling, because that bottle is the thing which brings me to Juliet. The props also make the play more realistic.

Revised paragraph

In the First Scene, which is Act 2 Scene 2, I use costuming and foreshadowing lines to show how Romeo ignores foreshadowing because of the extreme love.  I wear a black and white ancient shirt to represent  Romeo. The black color refers to the tragic  which Romeo and Juliet are going to face in the future. The white color refers to the pure love between Romeo and Juliet; the white color is too pure and clean that can not hold anything but love which shows that the love between them is extreme. That is why white color takes most of the place on the shirt; because of Romeo and Juliet’s extreme love, they can hardly pay attention to anything else including the foreshadowing. The lines I pick deliver an information that Romeo disregards his life, because he can do everything to stay with Juliet who is his lover. For example, here is one of the lines I choose from the book: “ My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” This sentence express a feeling that Romeo doesn’t care about his death but wanting the love from Juliet.  There is another line I pick with the foreshadowing words in it which is said by Juliet: “If they see thee, they will murder thee.” Although Juliet warns him about the risk of discovered by her family guards which is a foreshadowing of the future, Romeo doesn't want to leave, because he thinks his life is not as important as Juliet’s love.  Therefore, the costumes help me to point out the relationship between the foreshadowing and extreme love by distinguished colors. The foreshadowing lines help me to emphasize why Romeo ignore the foreshadowing.

Thesis and outlines

Outline:

Intro: lines scenes I choose, background info and my thesis:

In the performance, we use music, various volume, props and costumes to emphasize  how important the foreshadowing is, and the how tragedy happened because Romeo and Juliet ignore the foreshadowing. 

2. First paragraph is about how the extreme love between Romeo and Juliet make them ignore the foreshadowing. 

3. How music, sound volume, body language, and costume help me to emphasize the foreshadowing and making a contrast of Romeo's ignorance.

4. Talk about the foreshadowing in second scene, and how Romeo ignore it because of extreme love. How the music body language, facial expressions to help to show that.

5. How extreme love, impulsive action and the ignorance of foreshadowing lead to their tragedy ending.  The music, sound volume, body language and props help to show that.

6. Conclusion 

In

The first Draft

After I finish reading the play vision of “Romeo and Juliet”, I decide to act out the play which can give me a more realistic feeling, because I can substitute myself into the story and become a member of it. However, the whole play is too long for me, so I choose the topic which I am interested in to start with. The play is about the love between two teenagers from two hostile family; because of the pullback from their family and their impulsive action, they finally died together and reconcile the anger from both family. I am not a big fan of tragedy story, so I want to warn people by using the example of Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, my purpose in the play is to show how important the foreshadowing is, and how dangerous it is to ignore the foreshadowing because of the extreme love between Romeo and Juliet. Luckily, I find Julie who is also keen on this topic and we decide to work together. We pick three scene to present our ideas which are Act 2 Scene 2, Act 3 Scene 3, and Act 5 Scene 3. I act as  Romeo though out the play. My partner Julie act as Julie and Friar Lawrence though out the play. We act in the school’s black box theater which give us a great opportunity and environment to present the play. We also use sound affect, costume, and props to help the play become more realistic and entertaining.

In the First Scene, which is Act 2 Scene 2, I wear a black and white ancient shirt to show that I am Juliet. The black color can refer to the tragedy future Romeo and Juliet are going to face in the future. The white color refer to the pure love between Romeo and Juliet; the white color take most of the place on the shirt which shows that the ignorance of the foreshadowing of future, because of Romeo and Juliet’s extreme love. The lines I pick deliver an information that Romeo disregard his life, because he can do everything to stay with Juliet who is his lover. For example, here is one of the lines I choose from the book: “ My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” This sentence express a feeling that Romeo don’t care about death but the love from Juliet.  There is another line I pick with the foreshadowing words in it which is speaking by Juliet: “If they see thee, they will murder thee.” Although Juliet warn him about the dangerous of discover by her family members which is a foreshadowing of the future, Romeo think his life is not as important Juliet’s love.  Therefore, these lines perfectly fit the purpose of my play, because it emphasize how Romeo ignore the foreshadowing because of the extreme love, even he knows that the action he make is risky to his personal safety. 

I also add sound affect in the play to exaggerate the foreshadowing part of the lines. Therefore, it will make a contrast with Romeo’s extreme love. I and my partner choose a soft and smooth music as the background music which is called “Symphony no.101”. The romantic music fit perfectly with the situation that Romeo and Juliet talk about how they love each other. When they talk about the foreshadowing words, we change the music to “Ride of the valkyries” which is a rapid and depressed music. It indicate that something bad is about to happen. In my opinion, the trick to make a play realistic and entertaining is about the emotion you add into the play. In that case, I think music really help me to act emotionally, because the progress of acting with emotion will be a lot easier when you follow the flow of music. For example, when I play a romantic music, it is easy to speak with words like love and heart. With some facial expressions like smile and watching each others’ eyes while speaking, audience can feel the romance among those words bring out by the music. In addition, when the music is rapid and depressed, words like death and sorrow fit perfectly. It not only help me to manifest my emotion, but also give audience a psychological hint that something bad is about to happened. As the meantime, I will shake my hand and smile when the depressed music plays to show that I ignore my death, because it is not as important as Juliet’s love. Nonetheless, it is extremely important to pick the right kind of music to fit different situations. During the progress of the first scene, I and my partner look though almost hundreds of songs and listen to advice from the audience. Finally, we figure out the song which suit the lines.

I am going to talk about the next two scenes, how we use costume and props, how we rehearsal and how we improved from that.

Blog#9

Don’t Despise The Foreshadowing!

In my opinion, love is such a beautiful thing to pursue. However, fall in love blindly is not wonderful but cruel, because you will lose ignore things happened around you. You may also lose your mind and do something foolish and risky. Therefore, the whole propose of the play is to show how importance the foreshadowing is, and how dangerous it is to ignore it because of extreme love. We use exaggerate sound affect in the play , and  we wearing costume to make the play become as realistic as we can. In addition, all acting skills also improve a lot during the progress of the rehearsal.

First, I think we perfectly act out the extreme love between Romeo and Juliet, and how they ignore the foreshadowing because of the extreme love which cause their tragedy ending. Among the dialogues, we add body languages to show the love between Romeo and Juliet, such as look at each others’ eyes every time we talk, and smile every time we talk to each other. Also I will try to grab Juliet’s hand in the balcony scene to show her how I love her, though I am far away for her. Therefore, this explain why Romeo and Juliet ignore the oblivious foreshadowing and get into trouble. We exaggerate the foreshadowing words by speak it loudly, and change the smooth soft background music to a edginess and depressing one to show the dangerous behind those words. Also I add body language like shake head and hitting myself when I speak the word “death” which make a flawless expression that Romeo and Juliet don’t care about the hint of the foreshadowing words. The costume and props really helps a lot to make the play become more realistic and entertaining. For example, I use a plastic bottles as the poison to kill myself, and Juliet use the sword to kill herself because of Romeo’s death. 

Second, we improve the play from the rehearsal and the advice giving by our audience. The first time of practice, I almost keep my head down all the time while talking, because I can’t remember the lines. Also the pronunciation is terrible, and I can’t even read the lines fluently because of the difficulty of the ancient language. By countless practice during class and extra help period, I gradually can speak with confidence and fluently without looking at the script. Also the audiences give me advice which let me to add more emotions and body language into the play. For example, I think I do a great job at the part when Romeo is going to drink the poison and die with Juliet. I look at the bottle like looking at my lover and die with smile appear on my face, because I know I am going to see Juliet. However, I think that there are something we should improve in the play. We should memorize all the line, so we don’t need to carry the script with us in the play. In addition, we should slow down our speed and pronounce the word clear and loud. In that case, the play will be more realistic and easier to understand, because the language is hard(you need to listen carefully to the dialogues).

To sum up, we improve the play during the rehearsal and shows the dangerous of ignoring the foreshadowing because of extreme love. I think the music, pops, advice from audience and costume give us a lot of supports on making the play better. I think though this play the biggest improvement I get is learn how to act with emotion. Every time I act in the play, I will imagine I am Romeo. Therefore, the play will look realistic. I believe, next time I will be even better!

Video first draft

https://youtu.be/hABgF2FtEtE

Ideas about improving the play!

In our first draft of play, we use music as a help to show our emotion. While we are speaking the foreshadowing word, we will change the background music from a relieve one to a desperate one in order to show the dangerous behind theses words or action. However, we will show that we don’t care or ignore these foreshadowing words by body languages such as shaking head. In the first scene, I laugh and using the motion of shaking head to show that I don’t care about these words. In the second scene, I act like I am trying to kill myself to show that I don’t care about the dangerous behind the foreshadowing words. Nonetheless, because I am still not very familiar with the script, I need to look down at my script very often which influence the transmission of emotion and body language. Therefore, I need to try to memorize the script to act better in the play and pronounce the words right. In addition, I should be more emotional. For example, while Juliet dead, I should act out how desperate and hopeless I am instead of only following the script. 

Finally,  we need to play the music softly, because the musics cover our voice. We need to focus on the set up of the scene, too. In that way, the play will become more realistic. Also, because it is our first draft, we still need to practice how to coordinate each other. For example, while I was acting emotional which is showing my love by body language, Juliet should respond to my action. In addition, we need to arrange the movement during the play in order to face the camera all the time.

As you can see, that’s all my ideas about how to improve our next draft. The only thing I should do now is practice harder and harder!

In Class Writing

Our group's analysis is about the foreshadowing. We want to show that because of the extreme love between Romeo and Juliet, they ignore the foreshadowing which cause their tragedy ending. During the play, we will play a soft and romantic music which fits the scene. However, when there is a line with foreshadowing words in it, we will change the music to a scary and depressed one to show that something dangerous is about to happen. Also we will rise our voice when we are speaking the foreshadowing words. We will use body language to show that we ignore the foreshadowing. In addition, we pick two scene with foreshadowing in it, and one scene which is the last scene of the play to show that the tragedy is caused by extreme love and the ignorance of the foreshadowing. Therefore there will be a connection throughout the play. During the play, I am acting as Romeo. I will watch Juliet's eyes while I speak. When she says the foreshadowing words, I will shake my head or smile to show my ignorance of it. Also, I will speak the foreshadowing words loud to show its importance. I will addd more body language like putting my hands on my heart or tey to hug Juliet.

We need to show that we don't care about the foreshadowing by body language like smile, look at the sky, and shake head. We need to show that we are in extreme love. We need to be more excited and facing the audience.