project reflection

In class I performed “seize the day” with Helen and David. We could adapt the poem in our own way; therefore we could transform the poem into whatever kind of shape such as song or acting out. We chose acting, so that each person goes around and read few stanzas, and the rest of people act it out at the same time. Since the poem describes a day in order of morning, daytime, and night, we decided to divide into three sections and one person can read each one of them. We chose this way because we thought it would help audience to understand and realize the time order of the poem, and to more pay attention on the difference among morning, day, and night. We thought one of the biggest factors of the poem was time order, since each stanza described the environment or feeling of the different time zone, and that was what writer meant to highlight. David decided to read the morning part while Helen and I read the day and night parts the poem. While planning our choreography and movement, we tried to describe the literal meaning of each lines instead of expressing it vaguely. We just followed the line, and made movements what the writer was literally talking about. During the morning and night time, our movements were much narrow and small compared to when we did in day time. Since the writer told to be joyful and be enthusiastic in the work during the daytime, we tried to express hope and love by making a bigger movement with wide gestures. However, we went through difficult time while performing since the props were broken and I laughed for few moments. Later after performing, I learned new lessons that how important of controlling emotion is. Actors should never express their personal emotions in front of audience; even they’re happy or sad because of their personal matters, they should completely hide their emotion and act what they meant to do. So I was kind of disappointed to myself that I was being like an amateur. I should not get distracted by anything while I am acting out, but I should fully focus on my actions so that the audience can also follow through it well. However, I also think that we did a great job in some ways; although we had some difficulties, we did not give up or ask Ms. Guarino to go over it again, and we described the author’s intention very nicely by making all the movements each lines.
I think Nan's group did pretty well. While my group and Joey's group had similar interpretation about the poem, Nan's group understood the poem in a totally different ways, which were and rapping and singing. It was really fresh and interesting to watch poem getting transformed in to form of song. Also I was so amazed that the beat and rythm were perfectly fit to the lines of the poem. Joey's group was more similar to my group, they also acted out the certain lines by using movements and some background music. Most of students from other period class focused on reading through the whole poem rather than to transforming poem in different forms like song or acting. David's group read the poem really joyfully with high tone of voice while Yun and Stella's groups were more calmed and relaxed. While watching all different performaces, I realized that everyone could adopt poem in such different ways.