Practice Monologue Link & Reflection

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One of the things I focused on for this project was figuring out where the pauses in my speech should be. I could not always have them in the most natural places, because it would make the song structure of the original text more evident. The length of the pauses was also important. Making them too long disrupts the flow of scene and makes the audience uncomfortably awkward, or could give the impression that you forgot your line; but pauses that are too short can go entirely unnoticed and does not provide enough time for a clear shift in emotion.

Since I already had most of the monologue memorized in song form, my other biggest concern was the staging of it. At first, I was not sure how to frame the scene, which in its original form is a mother talking to her son, as a monologue with only me on screen. I considered directly addressing the audience, but it did not feel personal enough; I considered saying it to an invisible person on stage with me, but it was awkward and had me facing away from the audience. I eventually chose to frame this as the mom talking to herself after looking at a photo album that reminded her of when her son was younger, which avoided the pitfalls of the other options.

If I were to do it again, I would try to involve some more physicality like Rei did in his monologue. I would also want to start speaking at a higher volume so the audience could move clearly understand me (and then adjust the rest of my volume accordingly).

Twelfth Night at YaleRep Review

I saw YaleRep’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by Carl Cofield, last Wednesday, starring Moses Ingram as Viola, William DeMeritt as Orsino, and Tiffany Denise Hobbs as Olivia. The play is a comedy of mistaken identity. After being shipwrecked in the strange country of Illyria, Viola disguises herself as a man named Cesario to get a position working for Orsino, who has his heart set on marrying Olivia. While trying to court Olivia for Orsino, Viola falls for Orsino herself, and Olivia falls for Cesario. Things only get more complicated when Olivia’s twin brother Sebastian arrives and the other characters confuse him and Cesario for each other. Meanwhile, the play gets additional comedy out of a subplot involving Olivia’s family and servants messing with each other. It plays with themes of gender and class.
What makes this production unique is how it was influenced by the afrofuturism movement. This is obvious from the first scene, where Orsino is shown using a VR set that projects images of Olivia.

The other major uses of futuristic technology in the show are when VR is used in a second scene to torture Malvolio (a scene I found legitimately uncomfortable in a way that robbed it of its comedy), the voice effects applied to the fool Feste’s voice when he sings, and laser swords... well, swords with blinking lights on them accompanied by a constant swooshing sound effect that got grating after a while. There was also one small moment where the currency the characters use is shown, but from as high up as I was seated, it was hard to tell what it was, and it only came up in that one scene. As cool as the effects like the one in the image above were, I think it would have been cool to weave the futuristic technology into more of the show rather than just featuring it in big scenes and music numbers, even just in subtle ways.
But there’s also the “afro” part of afrofuturism to consider, and that’s where this production shines.

The earthly colors of the minimalistic set with the pleasing gradient of colored lights behind it, and the way parts of it effortlessly slide in and out of place, almost makes the set feel like a living, breathing thing. The architecture might have stolen all of my attention if not for the incredible costumes.

The costumes, with their bright colors and intricate patterns, were beautiful and elegant. Most characters had a signature color to make it easier to tell them apart; for example, Orsino’s suits are orange and Olivia’s dresses are dark blue, two colors whose contrast symbolize the distance between the two characters. 

The music in the show perfectly fits this aesthetic. It manages to sound not only futuristic, but also atmospheric and energetic. 

It’s difficult for me to pick my favorite actor from this production. In general the comedic scenes got more of a reaction out of me and the rest of the audience than the emotional one, which I believe to be a byproduct of it being a Shakespeare show; his complex dialogue can make it difficult to follow along with plot and pick up on subtle emotion, but with proper emphasis, it’s much easier to tell which bits are supposed to be funny. As such, the comedic actors left a greater impression on me in that sense. My favorite of them was probably Maria, since she at first appears to not want to put up with the other characters’ nonsense, but she reveals herself to be just as fun loving as the rest of them. My least favorite of them would be either Malvolio, mainly because his scene at the end of Act 1 dragged on for so long, or Fabian, who gets introduced later than the others for some reason and is essentially interchangeable with the rest.

However, I never really got attached to any of those characters. So in terms of forging an emotional connection while also still being comedic, my favorite characters would be either Viola or Olivia. As someone who usually doesn’t get much out of romance stories, I think they both managed to sell the moments where they realized their romantic feelings pretty well. Olivia’s progressively aggressive attempts to flirt with Cesario were amusing, and there was something about Moses Ingram’s performance as Viola - the initial naïveté with a sharp wit and effortless charm underneath, the sympathy she shows for other characters  - that had me routing for her the whole way through.

Afrofuturism Resources

https://dribbble.com/shots/4420927-Afrofuturism

Music: http://strangesoundsfrombeyond.com/magazineitem/afrofuturism-past-meets-future/
Fashion: https://thenerveafrica.com/15438/afrofuturism-takes-fashion/
Architecture: https://nonagon.style/african-architecture-afrofuturism/
Fashion & architecture: https://www.dezeen.com/2018/04/06/african-architects-designers-championing-afrofuturism/

Collaborative Writeup

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Wnk9jW-fyj5-Nt-5-uWzbGNooqd9TnVwDBcUAF8Lms

Final Reflection on Collaborative Project

Helen and I worked well together on this project. I think the final script reflected both my and Helen’s strengths as writers. We were mostly on the same page when it came to writing character dialogue, though I took a slightly larger role in determining the wording of the more significant beats and turning points. We decided on the sets and lighting together. Helen picked out most of the props, in particular the things on sale in the shop scenes and the clothes Lucretia looks at in Scene 3; the suitcase in Scene 4 was my idea. With both the sets and props, we wanted to include only just as much as we needed to get the point of each scene across, in order to save time setting scenes up.
The two songs featured in the piece, the one I hummed as I exited Scene 2 and the instrumental that played during the final scene, were chosen by me. I think the ending song, originating from the soundtrack of a video game I like, perfectly fits the ethereal, melancholy mood of that scene. The song I hummed was meant to be the chorus of the song “Come Hang Out” by AJR; I chose it because the lyrics are about the singer being too focused on work to hang out with his friends, which is very reminiscent of Lucretia’s characterization. If I’d thought about it more in advance I might have had the original song, preferably an acoustic cover if one existed to sell the idea that Jess was the one playing it, play over the sound system to make its inclusion more significant.
In earlier drafts, I was playing two characters, Lucretia’s roommate and an unnamed, older, returning customer at her shop. I never really figured out how I wanted to play the customer character, other than them being generally polite to Lucretia, and so I think it’s for the better that that character was cut. When playing Lucretia’s roommate, Jess, I went for a laid-back vibe to contrast with Lucretia’s uptight no-nonsense attitude. I did my best to show that Jess does genuinely like Lucretia, and is not a malicious person, but is still manipulative, irresponsible, and unreliable. If I was not also working on my role in the school musical, I would have spent time adding more nuance to Jess, but I think my performance was still satisfactory at the end of the day.
The idea we were trying to impart with this piece is that it is important to strike a balance between working to secure your future and enjoying yourself in the moment. Lucretia is admirable for working hard to make a living and achieve her dream job, but she is so focused on that that she does not care for herself emotional well being in the meantime. Jess was a burden, not actively working towards her dream and generally not pulling her weight in the relationship, but as soon as she leaves, Lucretia is totally alone; she has never found it worth the time or effort to seek out and forge any other friendships. I think we were able to get this across to the audience, particularly through Helen’s monologue in the second to last scene.

Let’s Hear it for the Kids: CA Footloose Review

I was a part of Cheshire Academy’s production of Footloose in the Black Box theater, directed by Jennifer Guarino, from March 1st through 3rd. The play, based on the 1984 film of the same name, was written by Dean Pitchford an Walter Bobbie, with music by Tom Snow. This production starred Tony Wang as Ren McCormick, Olivia Williamson as Ariel Moore, and Aaron Luo as Reverend  Shaw Moore.
The play starts with Ren and his mother moving from Chicago to the small religious town of Bomont, where a tragedy five years ago led local reverand Shaw Moore to enact a series of restrictive laws, including a ban on dancing. Unable to tone himself down and fit in, Ren resolves to challenge the law with support from fellow teens in the community, including his new best friend Willard and Reverand Moore’s rebellious daughter, Ariel. Along the way, romance blossoms between Ren and Ariel, and Shaw’s walls crumble, until Ren convinces him to abolish the law as the first step to letting go of his grief. As this production was put on by an international boarding school, the Director’s Note in the program emphasizes the angle of Ren as an outsider having to adjust to the customs of a new place. In comparison to the original Footloose movie, where Ren was played by Kevin Bacon, Tony’s portrayal definitely comes off more as an earnest, well-meaning outsider who can’t help but be honest and true to himself, rather than a semi-bad boy just looking to kick up a fuss. I personally connected with this portrayal a lot more, especially since it creates a greater contrast between Ren and Ariel’s drug-dealing high school dropout boyfriend, Chuck Cranston.
I liked how some of the costumes were color coded. Ariel and her three gal pals each had a signature color that made it easier to remember them as individuals. I really liked how, in Ren and Ariel’s first intimate scene alone together, Ren was wearing a red jacket to match Ariel’s red color scheme; I wish he had worn it in other scenes too to capitalize on that symbolism, like in their duet.
In terms of staging, I liked that there was a balance between complicated sets (the Buger Blast, Joe’s Bar & Grill) and comparatively more simple sets like the Moore home. It created a contrast between the limited, plainer world the adults of Bomont run, and the bigger, more lively world beyond their control. Like in the past few CA productions, the triangles were well utilized to set the backdrops of scenes. I particularly liked the grafittied triangles used for the train scenes; they not only served their narrative purpose well, but were also just very visually pleasing.
One thing unique to this production was an intro scene set before the play’s main plotline, showing a dance party being interrupted by a car crash outside. This is meant to represent the death of Shaw’s son, the event which led him to outlaw dancing. The addition does help set the show’s more serious undertones early on, without being as overly dramatic as showing the car crash itselfwould have been. However, because the five year timeskip in between this scene and the proper opening number is not indicated in the show itself via dialogue or the playbill, with the actors wearing the same costumes in both scenes, I worry someone unfamiliar with the story of Footloose might have been confused.
While I briefly talked earlier about Tony Wang’s portrayal of Ren, I would now like to highlight my other favorite performance in the show: Aaron Luo as Reverand Shaw. He does a lot to make the play’s antagonist, whom one might assume at first glance to just be a fun-hating bigot, nuanced and sympathetic. You could see the joy in his face when he was delivering his opening sermon, showing the passion he had for his job. He displayed multiple distinct levels of anger, allowing the tension in his scenes to build more gradually (the scene before his solo number in Act 1 being a prime example) and keeping his performance from being one note. In his final monologue, where he gives Ren permission to throw a dance, his vulnerability compared to the calm, charismatic professionalism he had worn around others up to this point was emotionally compelling and highlighted Shaw’s development. While he did not get many comedic moments, his “embarassing dad” moment in the final prom scene was adorkable and always got some laughs.
Overall, I really enjoyed the show. The cast had great energy and were consistently hillarious, with emotional performances from the leads. The music was great, with strong harmonies and vocal solos.
Footloose is an example to me of how plays do not have to stick to one tone throughout. Characters like Willard add levity to every scene they’re in, but everything to do with the Moore family had me emotionally invested. For a show I had initially assumed to be cheesy and morally simplistic, lines like “I’m sorry your father won’t ever get to know you” from Shaw to Ren hit me hard. I don’t think the balance always works; some lines that are meant to be meaningful just come off as silly to me, like “I’m becoming a mime”. However, after seeing this production, I can see why this musical is a classic.

Collaborative Devised Project Check In

The previous draft of our project mainly suffered from its length; not only did it go over the fifteen minute limit, but some of the individual scenes took too long to get to the point.
The first big change we decided to make to remedy this was to eliminate the customer character. They were intended to show how the attitude of Helen’s character, focused on working for the future and not valuing relationships with other people, ended up backfiring in a way that hurt her business, the thing she put all her time and effort into. However, because this character was only in two scenes, their subplot ended up just distracting from the main plot. As such, we decided to cut the character. The first scene will still be set in the shop, to establish Helen’s character’s dedication to her work, but we will instead use this scene to show Helen’s character meeting her roommate for the first time. On top of saving time, this change should make it clearer to the audience what Helen and her roommate saw in each other that led them to start their relationship.
The other major change we have made is combining scenes two and three, the two scenes in the apartment between Helen and her roommate. Since Scene 1 now establishes their dynamic and what they like about each other, showing how the rifts form in their relationship should only take one scene.
Beyond this, the other scenes can remain mostly the same, though we will be tightening the dialogue so that they don’t drag as much. We are confident that these changes will greatly improve our project.