Books/plays/short stories I have read

A Thousand Splendid Suns 

The Kite Runner 

A Streetcar named desire 

Romeo and Juliet 

Twelfth Night 

Macbeth 

1984 

His Majesty's Dragon 

Lottery 

The Catcher in the Rye

The Statue of Angel

The Alchemist 

The Death of a Salesman 

Stone 

Percy Jackson Series 

Responsibility of art and literature

According to Euripides's dialogue in Frogs, "Our best poets...have been the ones who've had something useful to teach" (Frogs 1094-1095), this dialogue represented Euripides believed art (drama) and literature playwrights created should have something useful for their audience in the theatre. He believed this was the purpose of a play/drama. In Frogs,  the play revealed the information about politics, society, war, religion, and many others.

Frogs dramatic reading reflection

What are the challenges of staging an “ancient” play? I think the staging of an "ancient" play like Frogs is challenging for actors because it requires a lot of effort to remember lines and vocabularies (which most of them are difficult and tricky to pronounce), not only that, since the Frogs is a comedy, meaning that the actors need to exaggerate their actions when they act. Moreover, some contents may have lost from the translation of the play (different languages). For that reason, it is a challenge to fully interpret and stage a good ancient play in modern days. What obstacles did you have to overcome as you prepared your dramatic reading? I had tried to control my volumes, make good enunciation, and speak with emotions. For the reason that English is my second language, it is challenging for me to speak the lines fluently. I think I have overcome those obstacles because luckily most of my lines were long and complicated to read. Why do you think we still stage these pieces? Ancient play is certainly an important part of the history of drama and language arts, so I think we are still staging these pieces because by studying these pieces, we are able to understand the world and society of ancient Greeks, and more importantly, they influenced us in modern arts, philosophies, sciences, mathematics, literature, and politics. In your opinion, what is the most important thing you learned from this play/unit? I learned two remarkable Greek tragedians such as Aeschylus and Euripides and what they did to influence their audiences and the society in their own ways. Aeschylus represents old-fashioned theatre/plays. on the other side, Euripides represented new-style of theatre/plays. More importantly, in Frogs, I learned that the reason why Euripides wrote the plays was because he believed theatre/plays were responsible to teach the audience to become critical thinkers. Furthermore, I get to know the importance of drama/play was to Greek at that period of time (Festival of Dionysus), and also three types of ancient Greek plays: comedy, satyr, and tragedy.

Blog Prompt

I think this video teaches about Shakespeare’s classic texts about the theme: birth, ambition, and other life experiences could all be shared and enjoyed with your friends and family through Google Plus.
This video uses Shakespeare to make a statement about social networking technologies by having a narrator speaking Shakespeare’s poem in the background as the video plays. This poem by Shakespeare is relevant to the social relationships, and by emphasizing the importance the social life is to a person’s life. This video makes the audience believing that Google Plus will enrich their social life. This video reveals that the social networking technologies, not just Google Plus, but Facebook and Twitter, have become one of the mainstreams to expand a person’s social life. Furthermore, it also reveals the truth that many social contacts involved electronic devices, such as laptop, network, cell phone, and etc. I will say this video is powerful and persuasive. I believe it successfully gets audience’s attention with the background music and Shakespeare’s poem. The video briefly presents a life of a man going from a teenage boy to a grandfather while showing features of Google Plus. This is very clever because Google blends a man’s life story into Google Plus, which makes it very familiar and friendly for its future users.

The purpose of satire in literature

Satire is a tradition that was passed from the past because it was a kind of comedy that many people enjoyed. The overall purpose of satire is to make moral or political change in society through using critical humor on the stage. The satire is a behavior and performance that an actor chose to use as a punishment toward these faults committed by politicians. Since satire was so popular, it eventually led people to act and behave differently in the future. I think this is right for literature to critique anyone because that's the purpose of satire, no one is safe from satire. People would often remember and entertained by the satire because it’s funny and hilarious, but if it’s performed correctly, the message would stick with them even after they left the theatre. Moreover, Frogs is probably the first satire that I have ever read.

Universal Longing

I suppose the meaning of universal longings is that readers' longings and desires could be shared and echoed from reading one same book. I think literature does echo "universal longings" and helps readers to connect with other readers through the same kind of feelings and emotions they received when they read the same book. When reading a book, readers tend to connect themselves into the characters (protagonists) as if they are the ones who are experiencing what they read on the text. In the case of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner, I feel as if I am Amir and Mariam as I read both novels; I saw Afghanistan in their perspectives on different matters in Afghan society. From doing that I received messages from Hosseini about ethnic, gender inequality, child abuse, religious exploitation and many others. I truly felt connected and less lonely when I was reading these two novels because I knew I was experiencing and going through the same things (emotions/feelings) that other readers have also been experiencing. 

Radio Play Reflection

What were your biggest strengths as a writer/producer as you worked on your radio play? Conversely, which skills did you have to develop as a writer and speaker as you completed this project?

I believe I demonstrated a strong determination as I worked on my radio play, for example, trying to record the voice early before the deadline for the reason that I want to have enough time to edit and make the radio more realistic through various sound effects and volume adjustments. Moreover, I have studied the formats of few different plays to ensure that the play I wrote is professional or somewhere close to that. Furthermore, since students were asked to use GarageBand for producing this project, which I go from not knowing how to use it to the certain point where I am capable of producing a project (radio play) like this. I believed that I have demonstrated a strong performance on the application of technology in this case.

Of course, there are some skills that I need to improve or could have done better, such as teamwork and communication because I get upset if my team is behind the schedule or refuse to collaborate. I know this is something that I need to overcome as a part of a team. There is a space for improvement.