Our first step in creating our play was to take the short story, children of the sea, in the book, Krik Krak, and adapt it to our interpretation. We based our script off of children of the sea. Except we changed the time period of the story. We made our adaptation occur one year before the girl tries to escape the Haiti and flee to America on the boat, in the short story. We took the woman and man from the story and described how they met in Haiti. We tried to give the characters in our adaptation the same characteristics they had in the original story. Except, for the father who we added to the story. We decided to make him a strict father to further the plot of the story. We made a love story to show how the met and how they got separated. Additionally, we incorporated foreshadowing into the play by talking about boats in the water on the beach. This was a clever way of connecting our version to the story. We did a good job at creating the script and changing it to be in a Haitian setting.
One problem with the play was that as we worked on the it my opinion of my character shifted. I was a 19 years old working at a radio station. At first I thought my character was quite educated and charming. This was what I imagined when I was writing the script. Except I did not write the whole script and had my disagreements on my lines. Later in the play I began to see my character in another way. I saw him as a desperate man later on in the play because of his lines. Yet, I still continued to portray him as confident to keep up his character. Which could have caused my acting to conflict with my subconscious thoughts. As the play went on finding my character's personality would continue to be a problem.
When performing my first draft, my first mistake was my picture of who my character is. Part of the problem is that I pictured him as two different people. There is the professional radio broadcaster, and there is a young adult who had a crush on a girl. One of these characters was boring, respectful, and plain while the other one was a very lively person. When at work my character would be more proper and with the girl it wouldn’t be formal. From the feedback, I realized that this logic was tragically flawed. First off, the girl I have a crush on came to the radio place. I could not be professional and respectful while hitting on a girl at my workplace in an utterly awkward manner. I needed to completely reconstruct who my character is as a person. Yet, I never quite figured this out. I learned that I am not talented enough to do two different personalities. I ended up merging them giving it a creepy vibe.
Additionally, my first draft was way too short. Our play was around eight minutes. We involved more action and hesitations to make it longer. Our play had all talk and there was no silence. Yet, there were perfect opportunities for silence. When I wrote my letter I could pause at times for dramatic effect. We added non-verbal parts where we walk on the beach and don’t say anything but have fun. This helped extend our scenes that already existed. Additionally, we added new scenes. In addition to increasing the duration of the play, there was a petty problem in the script that needs to be fixed. In the radio broadcast, I used the town of Riverdale which is an American name. I needed to make the themes in our play more Hadian. This was a challenge coming from american writers perspective. Although we fixed some of the mistakes in the rough draft we still made many more.
After making the script we decided to learn to act it. This was our first mistake. It is hard to act something when you don’t know the lines. We acted it out before we knew the lines in order to work better on our rough draft. We should have done it in the opposite order. It would have been smarter if we learned the lines first.
With this said, I struggled to learn the lines. It turned out to be a lot for me. This tempered with my ability to ask. Try patting your head, rubbing your stomach in a circle and jumping up and down. It’s pretty hard to multitask. It was hard for me to remember to act when I was focusing on remembering my lines. Even at the end, I failed to remember all of my lines leading to the next mistake.
Regardless, at the end our group made significant progress since the beginning of the play. Throughout the past few weeks, we have worked on creating a script based on the story and learning how to act it. Throughout this period of time, our group had many ups and downs. Yet, from the beginning, we have made remarkable progress.
In my final draft, I tried something I had little to no experience with. I had never acted in a play where if you didn’t know the lines or someone said the wrong thing you would have to improvise. In our final, we had to improvise and I was not prepared for it. When we practiced it we always had the lines in from of us. This was a mistake. We should have learned to act it without the lines in front of us and learned to improvise in our rough draft.
Another challenge we faced was my tone of voice. I decided to act out the first draft in another voice. I had planned on using two different voices in the play, but I ended up combining them and it became creepy. Yet, I think somehow when I used that voice I was able to remember my lines better. When I switched voices back to normal, somehow I struggled to remember my lines.
Overall, the main problem with our performance revolved around memorization. Memorization is the base of a play and without it, the whole thing falls down. You can’t build the second floor until the first floor is finished. This was our problem. We build the play without the foundation, and it collapsed the whole project. This was our major flaw. Next time we do a play I will be sure that the first thing I do is memorize it.
