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.

Personal Response

Kevin Au

Ms. Fournier

ENG 4U-5

February 5^rd 2014

A Streetcar Named Desire Film Adaption Personal Response

            In the film, A Streetcar Named Desire, produced by Kazan in 1951, is well adapted in my opinion. Even though there is a slight difference between the film and the play, but the clip is still effective due to the appropriate use of sound/music and adaption of screenplay.

            From the clip we watched, it started with a train arrived the train station at New Orleans while the music was playing, which the music was Jazz, not the blue piano. This was identical to the play because it started with a music played by Negro entertainers at a barroom of New Orleans. Later on in the clip, the Jazz actually continued playing until the end of the clip instead of playing to the blue piano like what happened in the play. In the play, the music changed instantly from Jazz to the blue piano once the characters started speaking in the scene one. This was a significant difference between the play and the clip because not only it was the first appearance of Kazan’s adaption, but also because the blue piano was such a strong symbol of Blanche. Tennessee Williams wrote, “This ‘blue piano’ expresses the spirit of the life, which goes from here/Above the music of the “blue piano” the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping” (3).

            In my opinion, Jazz was more appropriate than the blue piano on expressing the energy and spirit of the city of New Orleans because both the music and the city were vivid and energetic. Therefore, it was reasonable that Kazan picked Jazz over the blue piano. 

            Next, there was a notable difference between the screenplay and the stage play. In the clip, after Blanche arrived her sister’s house she then went to the bowling stadium looking for Stella, where they saw Stanley in a fight and soon left to have some drinks (alcohol) in a bar. On the opposite, the play first started with dialogues of Stanley, Stella, Eunice, and Colored Woman, where then Blanche arrived. This was the first adaption of Kazan where he cut out several dialogues that appeared in the stage play from the clip. This adaption made the clip more effective and straight because those dialogues from the stage play were not important at all.

            As for the start up of the film, Kazan replaced the section (dialogues) with Blanche walking on the street of New Orleans. More importantly, later on Blanche was surprised to see her sister’s husband behaving like an animal in a fight at bowling stadium. This adapted section was a lot more meaningful than the start of the stage play for following reasons: Stanley’s involvement in the fight symbolized his animal-like personality and Blanche’s face expression revealed her uncertainty of Stanley. The reason Kazan did this was because he wanted to foreshadow the future of these characters purposely.

            In scene one of the stage play, Blanche and Stanley had just met each other and he had not yet revealed his animal-like personality; however, in the scene one of the film, Kazan’s adaption already did.

                        Blanche. You must be Stanley. I’m Blanche.

                        Stanley.  Stella’s sister?

                        Blanche. Yes.

                        Stanley.  H’lo. Where’s the little woman? (Williams 25)

            In conclusion, I believed Kazan truly made some good adaptions on the uses of music and screenplay so far in the film. In despite of the difference between the film and the play, I still consider it as an effective piece of work.

           

Works Cited

A Streetcar Named Desire. Dir. Elia Kazan. Perf. Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. Warner Brothers, 1951. DVD.

Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions, 1947. Print.

Responding to the Streetcar Named Desire dramatic readings

My strength as a speaker is that I spoke with a great volume along with strong emotions. I tried to speak the dialogue in different speed because I wanted to mimicked the video I watched on Youtube about the scene I was reading.

My strength as listener is that I made annotation down on the book while the speakers read. I made annotation when I think it is important or significant in the play. I tried to construct the play inside my brain, simulating the atmosphere, positions of characters, musics, and others from the play, so I can understand more about the play without missing details.

My weakness as a speaker is that I did not use tone to communicate the sub-text while I read. The subtexts are important for me to emphasize because they are important and shouldn't be neglected.

My weakness as a listener is that I failed to pay full attention while the speaker read, meaning that occasionally I failed to draw down the important annotations.

My character's spine (Stanley): Do whatever he wants.

Evidence: "Oh! So you want some rough-house! All right, let's have some rough-house!"
                 "Tiger-tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We've had this date with other from the                                  beginning!" (p.162)
Action (stage direction): Stanley raped Blanche like an animal in estrus.

I think I did strong while I read Stanley's dialogue, but it seemed like I failed to use tone expressing the sub-texts, which I have no idea what sub-texts are in this scene.