Oral Presentation

    “My Love, My Love of a Peasant Girl,” was narrated by Ti Moune.The book followed her journey to find Daniel. The gods in her story controlled Ti Moune’s destiny and  manipulated the situations. However, the Gods also protected her by putting her in the tree during the storm, providing her shelter on her way to the Beauxhommes house, and giving her items and the help of strangers on her way to meet Daniel. Desiree always looked to the gods for guidance in the beginning of her journey, and though we, the readers, do not see much of them, they are accredited with responsibility for many of the story’s events. The Gods in the book had different roles and personalities. Erzulie was goddess of love, Agwe god of water, Asaka goddess of earth, and Papa Ge god of death. One of the themes of the book portrayed was controlling your destiny, which Ti Moune finally did. She decided to listen to herself and do what she wanted apart from what everyone else said. However, at the end of the book Ti Moune died making the book a tragedy.

      In our adaption of “My Love, My Love,” we decided to make the gods be the main characters of the story. The gods were set in an office and run a company called “GODS,” which is an acronym for “Global Overseer of Decisions Service.” The gods handle their daily tasks of controlling the universe. They do tedious office work, but their decisions will be affecting many lives. The Gods receive mail concerning their “principles.” (Erzulie will deal with love, Agwe with storms, etc.) This is showing a fantasy-reality situation.  They always refer to the people as their “pawns,” meaning they have complete control over them. We wanted the characters- Erzulie, Asaka, Agwe, and Papa Ge to have completely different personalities to mimic the departments they are in. Erzulie is upbeat, Asaka is sad, Agwe is always mad, and Papa Ge is mysterious. We wanted to keep the theme of deciding your fate, but also show how the gods had complete control. So, in the beginning of the play we say “where your fate isn’t up to you,” to indicate power and at the very end after Ti Moune dies we say, “were your fate mostly isn’t up to you.” The death of Ti Moune was tragic, so at the end of our play we added an epilogue announcing all of the things the gods did to change and work on being less controlling.

  When setting up the stage we wanted to make it look like an office, and a mail room. Asaka was set stage left behind Agwe who was back stage left. Erzulie was set stage back stage right and Papa Ge was set right behind her. Erzulie lounged on a chair to make her seem cool. Papa Ge lurked in the corner behind her, because it was hidden and more mysterious, and the purpose of putting Agwe and Asaka near each other, is because they used to love each other and that problem arises later in the script.

      I wanted to make my character, Erzulie, upbeat and fun. I wanted to make her likable, since she is goddess of love. I made her smile all the time and talk with a high voice and always on the top of her toes. I would always say things like “is everyone excited as I am,” to voice how boisterous I was. She was very different from the other characters who were more sullen and mad. I also wore a white shirt, a cardigan, grey pants and a pair of flats. This costuming was similar for everyone, but I made mine different by adding a red bow in my hair and wearing a cardigan instead of boots. To express this excitement, I often moved a lot and didn’t stay in one spot. Whenever I got angry I would stomp

over to Agwe, I wouldn’t just sit and deal with it. I also always walked around the stage and talked to everyone. Something that showed my identity is that I use my phone as a prop to show that I was more techy and girlish compared to everyone else. This helped pull my role together.

The overall project went well, I think my group has done a really good job at making the script original and creative. We each embodied our characters and made them into their own. My major accomplishment in this script is understanding Erzulie’s personality. She is a complicated character, because when she has many different sides of her. However, sometimes when trying to keep up with Erzulie, I talk fast. This could be an improvement from next time. I learned from staging this that the gods play a major role in the story, the control the world that they live in and they can make anything happen at a flick of your fingers. They were not mentioned often in the book, but this made me realize just how powerful they are.

Citations
http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4662/as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/aos/published/images/i/ph/iphone6/plus/iphone6-plus-box-silver-2014?wid=478&hei=595&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_sharpen=0&resMode=bicub&op_usm=0.5,0.5,0,0&iccEmbed=0&layer=comp&.v=1453545483214
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