- Describe the progress have you made so far. (You may need to review the skills and knowledge area for the unit, either on your cover sheet or at the top of this wiki). Describe the story elements and techniques that you used and how successful it was.
I think I made a good progress based on the skills I have gained throughout the unit, and the skills that were able to be obtained.
- research and collect stories from their own cultures
For this skill, I think I made a good progress. One reason, is that I have some knowledge about folk stories in Japan, and I was able to choose the most relevant story to present to the class. Our group was “Momotaro” (peach boy), and I think that there is a wide variety of people that have an idea of what this story is about. Eventually we ended up with a fairly good performance and we were able to understand the story.
- adapt stories for a younger audience
We were actually planning to use un-sophisticated language for little children to understand and entertain them, but unluckily the day we were supposed to perform, I was out to the Math fields day, so I couldn’t perform in front of little children. However, I think we made a good progress where we changed our use of language again to entertain people like 7th graders.
- use a variety of dramatic techniques to tell a story
This was half half. Watching the video, I noticed that I was sometimes talking in a non-45 degree angle, so I was showing my back to the audience when I was talking. I think this was the only huge mistake. Once I made a mistake, saying “This is the deep forest”. I was supposed to say “deep river” but I made a mistake. I am not sure if it is a technique, but I used my panda’s characteristics to cover my mistake. I said, “Sorry, I am a panda so I have some mistakes in vocabulary.”.
- interrelate with a younger audience
I was supposed to ask where the Oni (ogre) was to the children, but I couldn’t perform to the smaller children… So we changed the story again, because no offense, it is really awkward if I do that to a 7th grade audience.
- What are the strengths and weaknesses in your scene as a whole and as an individual?
I think that the largest strength of our scene, was that we gave so much laughter. This was really effective, I guess. One more, is that we all had a good understanding of the story, so we did not have any huge mistakes because we all knew the whole story. We used some techniques such as acting like real things such as trees. Nicolai worked really hard and he acted really good being the Oni. Eva had a really good voice like a grandmother. The weakness was that sometimes we turned back and talked with our backs facing the audience.
- Is your scene successful? Why or why not?
It is fairly successful. It is because I was able to give a summary of the folk tale, and the comedy made the audience laugh. The comedy also effected the understanding of the story. My friend said he had a good understanding of the story. He said others were just storytelling, but he said ours was really funny and easy to understand. Although I THINK that all groups were really good…
- What could you do to further improve your artistic process?
I think that I just have to be careful not to face my back to the audience, and to improve a little bit on making chants. When I reflect back, I was able to make a chant, because there was a chant in the actual story, like “Momotaro-san, Momotaro-san” so if we have some other project similar to this, I would like to be careful in the chants part, and increase my area of using techniques.
Below is my video..
