Oral Outline

My character is Manman from the second story "Nineteen Thirty-Seven." My name is not told at this point in the story. I am around mid-forties. I have a daughter who's name is Josephine. I believe in Voodoo religion which is not legal yet at this time period. I tried to get up to the city with my daughter, we passed through the Massacre River and finally get to my friend's house. My friend has a sick baby, and as soon as my daughter and I arrived at their house, the baby died. I am sure I did not do anything, they just blame me and accuse me of killing that young blood. What I want to highlight in my performance is the facial expression and the feeling when mom is pretending strong, and saying that everything is fine. So, I am in prison now. What I am doing is dangerous and illegal which is the Voodoo religion, as I said at that time it is illegal, but I did not do anything that would hurt anyone. Still, I kept this as a secret from my daughter, I am doing everything I can to protect my child. I am in prison which is in the city, and I am suffered and tortured by the soldiers. I was curling in the corner trying to find a place that makes me invisible from the soldiers but comfortable, although all the soldiers are afraid of me. My hair got shaved by those soldiers, they said is cutting off my wings so that I do not have the chance to do any bad things. But I still have to pretend strong to show my daughter that I am fine, in order to not let her worry about me. In our version of the story, I came up with the idea of separating the stage into three parts so it can save us more time for performing instead of remembering the cues for scene changes. I was in the middle of the stage for a couple reasons, first of all, Josephine has to come to prison to visit me so it would be reasonable to put my scene right next to her's, and The Boy's scene should be away from Josephine's, so that it can create a feeling that they are far away from each other. At first, I did not have as many lines as other group members, so I decide to act two characters. I will be two different characters, one is Manman, and another one would be Celianne. Because this two-character they have things in common, which is their tragic life and they are both mothers, who always love and think about their children. Why I choose Celianne out of all other characters is because that our main theme (at the end of the performance) that we are highlighting is the things happened on mothers and lovers and others back that time. Also, another reason would be that "mother" is also the critical character that Edwidge Danticat want to highlight and use as one of her central ideas. But, after I try the whole performance out, I decided to take out the idea of me acting two characters, because I found out that there will be not enough time for me to change costume in between.
When I am acting "Manman," would be my main character the how performance. I am mostly in the scene prison. This is also a character that has a tragic life. The difference between the two characters would be that Manman has Josephine to visit her and take care of her, but Celianne has no one there for her when she died. When Josephine (Cassidy) comes to prison to visit me, I will act out that Manman is trying to show Josephine that she is fine, but actually, she is dying and not feeling well. Also, she keeps trying to talk to Josephine about something else, and trying to tell Josephine to protect herself, and tells Josephine that how important Madonna is. When Josephine comes to the prison again to visit me, I will be kind of mean and act like do not want to talk to her that much, just keep telling her that keep the Madonna and leave. This is where I try to show that Manman wants Josephine not to depend on her, to let Josephine do not think of and speak of her that much after she is gone.
For setting up the scene, I used two perioactoids as the background to show the prison scene. Since I have the least lines to speak, I recorded all the voiceover parts, so that my part can be more colorful and since the voiceover is providing the background story of the "mother," so it is reasonable for me to take the voiceover. Ever since I noticed that I have fewer lines than other group members, I figured out that in order to make my performance more colorful, I need to do more facial expressions and show more emotion. For example, when Josephine visits me, I need to show that strongness that mother is pretending so that she can lie to Josephine that the soldiers have not treated her badly. Also, I decided that instead of sitting on the ground for the whole time and without moving around, I will do some movements, like moving the food around, tiding the room, etc. When I am doing these movements while David and Cassidy have their lines, either the blue light or the red light will always be up, not only to show the atmosphere of the scene but also can let audiences to see what are other actors doing. And what I did for the final performance is that I added performance for the last part of the voiceover on stage, so that my character's story could be more reasonable and provide more information for my character, so I would still be Manman who is bitten by a soldier. And definitely, I showed more on facial expressions and emotions, and also body languages that show my fear towards the soldier. I could have done better for blocking and voice volume could be louder. I learned a lot from this whole project, it is really hard and needs a lot of effort to put a performance together, from script to lighting to costume to settings, blockings and memorization. There is nothing that seems easy for anything, everything reqires hard working.