Oral Presentation : The Contrast Between a Peasant and a Grand Homme FIRST DRAFT

My Love My Love the peasant girl has many distinct features which can be transformed into various versions. One of its features I chose to show was the contrast between the rich and the poor. It is the major theme and the key factor that brought up all the conflicts in the book. Showing the contrast would show the corruption of the rich and the weakness of the poor. The difference in class level created the uncrossable love between a peasant girl Desiree and the rich boy Daniel. Just like Romeo and Juliet, the love is discouraged by both parents because of the blatant disparity. However, unlike Romeo and Juliet, the love between them does not last any longer as Daniel already had a fiancee who is also rich. I felt like this somehow tells the rich used the poor as their toy for a temporary tool. Thus, I tried to highlight on the contrast the most on my group assessment.
My group had four people. It was obvious not enough number of people to make scenes. So we decided to choose four crucial characters who are needed to show our main theme. As a result, Ti Moune and Daniel, obviously, and Tonton Julian and Gabriel Beauxhomme who are father of them were chosen. Our adaptation was more like the summary of whole plot than re-making. However, because my group was focusing on the contrast between the rich and the poor, we used several devices to exhibit it.
The most noticeable factor of our scene is the use of light. I had painted background which is divided by half. One half is the poor side which has huts and more trees, and the other half is the rich side which has hotel and modern building. We used light to spot on the place where the event is taking place, and used black-out to show there is nothing going on in that side. Also, we featured some musical devices which will help us effectively depict the class difference. On the poor side, characters play ukulele, while on the rich side, characters play piano and talk about the classical composers.
My role in the scene was Tonton Julian. He loves his daughter so much so he does not want to let her fall in such hopeless and dangerous love. He tries to be optimistic for the entire act not because he is actually a happy person but because he does not want his daughter to be depressed and he wants to guide her to the benign way. Even though he guides her, he does not force her to follow him. He respects his daughter's opinion with giving thoughtful advice. On the top of it, he trusts her and loves her. He dedicates himself to go on a long journey to the rich side to find Daniel's father, for he has to protect his daughter from potential threats. Getting into warm-hearted and loving father role was not an easy task for me since I have had no similar experience.
Once we had our scenes and role gotten down, the actual staging proceeded smoothly....
Through the scene making process, I grew up a lot as an actor. Firstly, I had to act father which was very unusual for me. I learned to put myself into the thing which I never experienced before. It is always really different when I actually act it out than when I just read on the book.