Never Ending Journey - Acting

Two days ago, our group has finished the first draft for the final project. I guess we are in a fine shape, but certainly we have a lot of things to improve. I think our scene’s level of completion is pretty high. The aspects that need to be improved are mostly acting parts such as emotions and movements. Throughout the course, we all have improved very much, so for the final one, it will be good to put all our potential out so that we can end the year strong. As Ms. Guarino commented on us, I want to talk about the way to improve our scene. 

First, the most important thing to resolve would be the scene 3, where Della thinks what would be good for Jim’s Christmas gift. Our choice, at first, was that Jim comes out to the stage and stands in diagonal to Della to indicate that they are not in the same place. Followed by my movements, she says lines about the watch. This scene was actually for us to eliminate some boredom that audience might feel because we thought our scene overall was a little depressed and serious. I thought that this could be funny because when Della says “He adore [the watch]”, Jim actually rubs the watch on his cheek. Sadly, a few people said that this was a little confusing. However, we decided not to delete this part as we thought this is a pretty important part . I also think this would be better with the actual watch and more exaggerated motions. Secondly, we might need someone to check our music (I think that is not a problem). Third, for the flashback where Jim and Della went shopping and saw the comb, we should wear different clothes and turn off the music (or different song that is not a Christmas carol) to show it is a different time. 

The other two groups seem interesting for me. Both are doing my favorite pieces; especially Slumdog Millionaire I watched for two times. I may have a little high expectation on them because not only do they have more people but also it is natural that it is harder to adapt something that is already “perfect”. The Little Prince group was interesting as they tried to come up with a different interpretation using songs to be comedic. Also, it was good that they chose three important characters other than the little prince to show the long story as briefly as possible. The Slumdog Millionaire group was also good. It would be very hard to perform in the black box but they somehow did it. I think because the main character figures out the answer using his memory, so I want them to be clearer how the experiences are related to the questions. I think that will help them add a little more drama. I would suggest Ben to put more emotion especially when a person got shot and died. 

Considering this was the first draft, I think, we are not in a bad shape. However, considering that we only have a week left until the final draft, we might not be in a good shape. I want to work on mostly on my emotion, and hopefully, it turns out to be better with actual props and smooth scene changes.