oral presentation outline

1. what story

The story we created was based on the two stories from 'Krik Krak", Children of the sea and Nineteen Thirty-seven. We connected the two stories by making the boy from Children of the sea related to Josephine. At the same time, we still kept the character of Josephine's mother. The story goes with two different branches. The first one is the love relationship between Josephine and the boy on the boat, and they write letters to each other.

The second branch is the story between Josephine and her mother, who is imprisoned because people thought she is a witch. The reason why we chose to connect the two stories is that we thought one story branch may make the performance look boring and two can have the effect of having more emotions and acting of each character. The whole story describes how Josephine falls in love with a boy who is on a boat leaving Haiti and a mother who is blamed to be a witch who accidentally killed a baby and has wings. She came to the prison several times and eventually her mother dies and tells her to keep the Madonna. The boy is dead eventually, killed by the Haitian government. In the actual story, the author does not specifically mention the death of the boy, but we decided to add the death scene since it will make the ending more dramatic.


2. literary analysis of the story

-Themes
1. Love: the theme of love can be found specifically at the last part of the script said by Josephine to her love: Behind the mountains are more mountains and more black butterflies still and a sea that is endless like my love for you.' This quote directly mentions the word love and describes it as the endless sea, which is the use of simile.

2. Loneliness: this theme is shown the most obvious at the last part where both Josephine's love and mother die eventually and leave her alone in this cold world, a good quote would be the last seven  lines  'these are the stories, the stories of the women... the stories of the ones who could fly.' this last part is very powerful to show how brutal the situation was in Haiti and how the story of Josephine is common at that time.

3. Tragedy: this one is expressed throughout the play and most vividly shown when Josephine says 'Them chopping my mother's body apart.  Bloody scene. The scene is described vividly and fully grabs the audience's attention.



3. Performance

Lighting: instead of using a small range spotlight, we decided to use a wider range of lighting, which provides us with more space to move on stage. Whenever I am speaking, the background light should be blue since I am at the sea. Whenever Josephine and her mother are speaking, the light should be red, which symbolizes the death of Haitian people and set the tone of fear.

Staging: performing in a black box theater, we decided to make the stage simple. The stage is divided into three part, where each part is for one performer. This simple staging gives the audience a full image of the stage, easy to keep on track. We did not use many props since we do not have many blackouts to move them so that we kept it simple. Madonna, food.

Costumes: we chose to use simple costumes. I wore blue, which symbolizes the sea. Josephine wears a skirt to show her innocent characteristics. Her mother wears a prison shirt since she is in a prison.

4 Acting

personally, I was satisfied by my performance. I had great control of the speed of the lines and took my time to build up the mood. Every time the spotlight is on me, I will take a second or two.  My voice was loud enough. I had great preparation. For example, I used the strategy of hot seating to explore my character; I found that method very helpful.

what went wrong:
1. not enough body language: throughout the performance, I did not use enough body movement to express my feelings.
2. not enough facial expression: Because it was a monologue based performance, the facial expression is extremely important to show my emotions.
3. could have been more emotional: this can be included in my use of voice. Throughout the performance, my voice did not stand out.
4. could have used more gestures: this is also part of the body language.








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