Written Oral: Rough Draft

The short story “Nineteen-Thirty Seven”, focuses heavily on the impact of religion and/or belief on relationships. Because this story showed so much potential for different contemporary forms of adaptation, I was very interested in picking it for my scene. I loved the idea of working in a small group of all women and the many different ways the scene could be altered to show their connections with one another.
 Therefore, I aimed to highlight the role faith played in each relationship between the Madonna, the mother, the grandmother, and Josephine, while also demonstrating the impact it had in their decision making.  By showing each of their feelings throughout the scene, the audience was able to gain an insight as to how religion affected their relationships with each other, and how it influenced the decisions they made.
In the actual short story, the Madonna is a figurine that Josephine's mother latches onto for emotional comfort and spiritual guidance. However, in our scene, we chose to have the Madonna begin the scene as a doll, and once Josephine loses her mother, she comes to life. By adapting this aspect of the story, we were able to allow the Madonna to actually guide the mother (and eventually Josephine) throughout her life. It gave the scene and the audience a new perspective, showing the mother constantly consult the Madonna as her guide and her crutch for support.
In order to portray my character, the Madonna, as a god-like figure whose sole purpose was to help the mother, I knew I would have to have a strong presence on stage. In order to achieve this, I manipulated by body language and my vocal tenacity. For example, whenever walking around on stage, I tried to stand as straight as I could, holding my head up. However, when I needed to show that I was a form of comfort for the mother, I would lower myself to be on her level, make eye contact, and establish a sense of touch whenever speaking to her. When I did verbally communicate with her, I tried to speak slowly and calmly, only using louder volume when a situation called for it. For example, when the Madonna chases after the mother in the river, I used louder volume to show the audience that I was gaining her attention, and to demonstrate that I was powerful.  Therefore, I was able to show that while I was still on a higher social level than her, I could still emotionally connect and have sympathy for her.
While all of this worked very well for the scene, I would do a few things differently. Specifically, I would limit the overall number of scene changes and use different props. Because of the constant stopping to change scenery or to transition, our scene was unable to flow. If I were to correct this, I would rewrite the script and comprise scenes so that hopefully it would not only flow more, but also so that the audience would be able to focus more on the relationships, plot, and characters. If I had the opportunity to change some of the props, I would love to use an actual Madonna figure. This way, the audience could understand that the Madonna is a symbol for religion. Because we used a cluster of fabric for this, I fear our audience will lack this understanding.