Bushnell Trip

Today I went to a Bushnell trip to Hartford in order to see a “ One woman played show” called Warriors Don’t Cry. Before I went to see the performance, I had a little confused on how could one woman perform different characters in the show and what actions or tones she will use to help the audience to figure out which character she is performing. Before the show, I read the introduction of the show and also searched some background knowledge about the Warriors Don’t Cry, so I know the setting of the show and different characters in the show, so I became more interested in the actress who called Maria to perform different characters on the stage because I want to know what does she do on the stage to describe one character’s characteristic and how would she let the audience distinguish different characters she played. 

When the show started, I noticed one thing which is the light, the director did not close the whole lights immediately, he gradually close most lights, just remained some lights pointed to the actress, so this behavior would let the audience’s mind to be followed with the actress. Then the actress began to tell the story, during her telling, I noticed that she did a great job on performance. When she was speaking, she also did the actions to relate her speaking, even the audience would have some questions on her speaking, but from her actions, an audience would understand the show clearly. So during her performance, she solved one of my questions that how could her performance helped an audience to figure out which character she is playing. She used two methods, first before she said the lines in one character, she would speak out the name of the character, then the second step is to use different actions to distinguish different characters, for example, when she was playing grandma, she will bend over and speak slowly and mumbling, however, when she performed Melba and soldier, she will stand straightly and talk confidently. Also from her performance, she will stop at some points, which would help audience to know what happened, like the diary part, before and after she wrote the diary, she would stop some seconds, it can help audience to know the timeline and have a chance to conclude what happened and also this pause can also help her to have a chance to rest because this is a “ One woman played show”, she can not finish all plot in one time, so her solution was to divide the plot into different small parts. 

Also after the show, when the presenter asked us to use one word to describe the whole show, someone said inequality, discrimination, or dramatic. These words are true for describing the circumstance in Warrior Don’t Cry, but in my mind, “ struggle” is the true word for describing the whole play, because this play was written by Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals, she was the main character, Melba, one thing we need to remember is that the whole play was from her sight, so she was struggling in the racial discrimination, she faced the inequality but she had no solution, compare to modern world, when we face the discrimination, we can ask help from teachers, governors or adults, however in this play, nothing she can rely on.  Not only the white students want to bully her, but also even some teachers, parents wanted to attack and expel her out of the area where the white man lived. She is struggling in this situation but she had nothing to do about it. This story was dramatic, but at the same time it was so realistic because it reveals the real situation at that time period. So I think this story, and this performance, both bring the shocking feel to the audience.