Oral Refelction

 In my oral presentation, I introduced and overviewed my adaptation of Children of the Sea. In the first part of my presentation, I introduced on how I changed some parts of the story, for example, from Haiti to North Korea, from couple to married husband and wife. Moreover, how I changed the plot that both female and male characters left home on their journey to escape. I also mentioned in the first part about what and why I chose to keep from the original story: The method of writing letters to each other. It is an element that made the original story special and how it is structured, so I kept this part. Also, the reason why I chose North Korea, is because of its situation similar to Haiti, strict and harsh. However, I started explaining the characters I created in the second part. I try to make a clear separation to make it easy to comprehend and make the information I am giving organized. I mentioned how me as the wife and my partner as the husband has in difference, I also related this to gender role. This is what I think I did well on, I try to relate small details in my story to a bigger theme that is in common from both the original story and my adaptation. Moving on to the third part of my oral presentation, I started discussing the blockings. I told how me and my partner chose to use lighting to create a separation on the stage to show two characters being in different location while acting. How we used our props, the flags and playing national anthems. I also mentioned another important part of our blocking by having my partner standing up right and me curving my back to create a high and low level to show our different characteristics: strong and weak. For the fourth part of my presentation, I started analyzing the performance. I tried to explain all of our analysis in chronological order while we stage it, by explaining the first scene first then slowly moving on to the next few scenes.
      Overall, some parts I think I did well were speaking in a steady speed, finishing in time, and told everything that I thought is important to analyze from our adaptation. What I think I could have done better, was to be more fluent while speaking. Also, I think that I could have done a better job to make my speech more logical for the listener to understand my point deeper.

Oral

       Children of the Sea is a love story between a young couple telling their feelings for each other through letters, but never being sent out. It was one of the most touching stories from the novel Krik Krak by Danticat. Therefore, this is the story I chose to make an adaptation on. To stick more to the origina story, I kept the important and obvious element of the story: the method of writing letters to each other to express love and tell their situations. We used many of the text into our letters but also changing, adding a little bit to make it logical to our settings. Oppositely, what I changed to make it more interesting and into a new version, is the location, I changed Haiti into North Korea to create a similar situation as being isolated, having a strict government, inequality between genders, and difficult to escape. The couple in my adaptation is also married, having a daughter who has already escaped to South Korea, creating a stronger motivation for the married couple to leave North Korea as well. The husband and wife will be escaping through different routes to increase the risks of getting caught, this will create a separation between the lover and then the writing of letters will start to explain what they've been through and what they are feeling in the moment. The father is set to be a very protective, strong and brave man; On the other hand, the wife is set to be a weak, fearful and nervous woman but filled with love for her daughter as well as her husband. James is acting as the husband, and I am acting as the wife. 

       For our blockings, we created a separation through the lighting to shine only on the side while one person is writing his or her letter then darkens when another is starting their part. It is basically lights being altered with the two characters taking turn of their performances on stage. We played the national anthem of North Korea, put up posters of KimJongun and a North Korea flag to show the audience our location for the beginning of the story. In the last scene where the wife successfully arrived at South Korea, we put up a South Korea flag as well as the national anthem of South Korea to again update the audience the situation and location of the characters. Focusing more on the performance, James continued to change his position to show him not being afraid, In my performance, I stayed in the same position sitting down on the bench with curved back to show my fear on the journey alone. This created a visualized, high and low blocking of the two characteristics, strong and weak. 

        Some analysis and details the audience might not recognized in our performance including our emotions being showed through body movements. In the very first scene, when we mentioned our daughter being sent away by the father, I was angry and could not understand wholey to this choice the father has made; To show this anger, I raised my voice up while saying the line"But we will never know if she has the better life or not!" to show how worry and depressed a mother is not seeing her daughter for a long time and not being able to contact her daughter. Also while two of us sat down after the first line, I poured the tea for both of us and hand it to my husband first, this small detail being acted naturally shows a small part of gender role, man first and woman serves as housewives are used to getting things ready like meals, drinks and houseworks. Even though just a small action could be fit in to the scene it is a part we put some attention on while writing the script. The mother is also not as edcuted and well-informed as the father, she asked "what do you think is the safer way" and speaks overall less through their conversation to show her dependent on her husband. Later on in our individual small seperated stage writing our letters, I tried to use facial emotions and an unsure voice to speak many of the lines to show my fear being along on a journey. But to make sure that it isn't boring, I continued to rise up my head and make eye contacts during the process of writing. 

        Some parts I think I did well for the performance was to try to make as much actions within our plot being set with moslty writing letters. My partner also did a great job by changing his position in a small area while writing letters to keep it interesting. A difficult part for me as always was to memorize the script, I missed some parts of the script but continued acting while is a good thing in this flaw I made in my performance of being accurate, sticking to the script. 

        

Feedback for children of the sea adaptation

Our performance is an adaptation of the story Children of the Sea from Krik Krak. We chose a location of North Korea to show make it similar to a society and government like Haiti, oppressing, strict and isolated. In the story Children of the Sea, both characters wanted to leave Haiti, the male character left Haiti on a boat and the female character back at home. In our adaptation, we made both characters tried to escape. The father, sharing a lot of the characteristics with the male character in the original story of Children of the Sea, for example his braveness and desire of freedom.   For the mother, we chose to set her with a more weak and fearful character to show the difference in the typical gender role from both North Korea and Haiti. The biggest part we illuminated and take from the original story, is the way how the lover's communicate and express through writing letters to each other while bring forced to separate. 

      Because of our simple and quite acting, my partner James continued to change his position while reading his letters to show how he's more energetic, brave and strong. Me as a female living in North Korea for her whole life, showed more of a conservative characteristic and was sitting more still to show myself being afraid to move. Also lots of questioning are written in my script to show my concerns to my husband and my daughter. Even though our performance did not stopped and went smooth, but I think there are still parts that are missing that could make this performance better. First of all, I could have been more emotional to make these motion less scene more interesting to watch. For example, speaking louder when I'm actually shocked and angry about the soldiers, putting my face into my hands to show some mental breakdowns. Second of all, and the part the I wish I could have done better the most, is on the last scene. It should be so much more powerful since it is a monologue and the ending should be impressive and memorable for the audience. I missed the most romantic line and a theme from the original story---"and a sea that is Endless, like my love for you". I should speak louder when it reaches the end and also keep my eyes really focused to the camera. I could have suspended the emotions and let it be the most emotional to explode in e few last lines.