Blog post Q3

Question 3 Despair
   As a novel that is strongly related to religion and multiple gods, the book ‘My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl’ does a great job of setting the gods as high status and powerful characters, but at the same time, interactive with normal people in the play. Desiree, as the main character of this book, has both respect and fear to the gods; The most effective part that shows both of these feeling of her is when Papa Ge shows up next to the window and Desiree prays to Agwe and is willing to give Agwe her soul in order to exchange her love Daniel’s life.  
   In the novel, page 46 to 47 when Papa Ge first comes into the story, there is a scary description of Papa Ge, who is the god of death. The description says ‘a shadow appeared against the outside darkness, a shadow that became thicker, larger, then formed itself into a man, a man in black… his clothes as dark as the night behind him, his top hat outlined against the fray, stormy sky. Not a man - a demon! His mouth gleamed red, blood red… his teeth dripping with blood.’ Throughout the description, words include ‘dark’, ‘night’, and ‘blood’ appear multiple times, which symbolises how Papa Ge is different from the another god appeared in this passage - Agwe. As the god who has the impression of being tall, beautiful, and high status, he is respected by Desiree, which brings to Desiree’s monologue of how she preys to him about that she is willing to exchange her soul for Daniel’s love, and then sings to Daniel; Desiree sings ‘I am here to guard you while you sleep.’ This part shows how Desiree’s emotion changes from only fear to a mixture of fear and love.  In order to put all these I mentioned above on the actual stage, there will be several elements that I will discuss in the next few paragraphs, such as lighting, costumes, staging, and acting.
   First of all, I will design the stage in a black box theatre since it has a simple shape of stage. The stage will be divided into three even parts, where Agwe stand on the left, Desiree stands in the middle with Daniel laying on the ground, and Papa Ge stands on the right side of the stage. The the two gods, they should stand on either blocks or stair. The reason why Desiree is standing between the two gods and the two gods are standing in a higher position than Desiree is that it shows how Desiree is between two individuals who have higher status than her and she needs to make a choice, surrender to Papa Ge who she is afraid of, or prey to Agwe who will be generous and help her. While she is on the stage, Desiree should be on her knees in order to show how she is struggling and powerless to help Daniel without the gods’ help.
  The order of the lighting should be  first right and middle (Papa Ge shows up and Desiree sees him), then Middle and left (Desiree preys to Agwe), and finally only middle (Desiree sings to Daniel). The continuous lights on and off can give the audience a clearer direction of where they should focus on. When the scene begins with Papa Ge’s entrance, the dim red light should be on him, which shows the symbolism of blood, and it should turn on slowly that brings a sense of mystery. On both Desiree and Agwe, the lights should be either pure white or brings yellow, because it represents a sense of innocence and shows how pure the two characters are. When I was deciding what costumes each character should wear, I realised that each costume should be carefully selected since it can represent each character’s thoughts and personality. Therefore, Papa Ge should wear a dark red cloak, which is a typical dark side character’s appearance; the best fit for Desiree should be a pure white long skirt which shows her pure and innocent personality, maybe with a few brown stains on it since she is a peasant; for Agwe, I think a combination of gold and white jacket will fit since it presents the sense of richness and the high class style. 
   Finally, when it comes to acting, I think the most important character should be Desiree since she is the only one who speaks in this scene, and the other two just stand and look at her. This whole scene is aimed to show how despair Desiree is when she first sees Papa Ge and then begs Agwe for help. Therefore, it is crucial to show the different uses of facial expression when Desiree is seeing the two gods; for Papa Ge, she should look nervous and struggling; for Agwe, she also look struggling, but add a little desperate. Throughout the whole performance Desiree’s body language should be nervous and unsure what she should do. Now, all of these above are my design of the play and how I interpret the role of Gods, and how Desiree will be despair. 

Sorry I wrote a bit more than 800


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