Exhibition Reflection: What I Thought

Exhibition, held on Thursday, April, 17th, overall went well and was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. During the first forty minutes my group (C) was free to roam about the school. We went into the Great Room and looked at the other projects, one of which had to do with a game called "Clue". This time period was very interesting and gave us somewhat of an idea of what we would be doing over the next three years.

Next, we were to do Humanities shift. We worked at our station on the actual project while visitors came around and asked us questions. During this time period we were to actually work on the project to show the people our process and how we were actually accomplishing this task.

I think that some of the strengths of this shift were that we explained things thoroughly and engaged our audience with tales of witchhunt and such. One weakness that I noticed was that sometimes we weren't sure how to explain what exactly Puritans were. I knew that their religion was very similiar to the Catholic religion, if not exactly that.

Throughout this shift, we came across some challenges. Mr. Nuthall did come over and ask many questions that were difficult to explain at times. Finally, in the end I ended up explaining the entire history of the Salem Witch Trials and how they came about to avoid the awkward questions. The questions that were asked were somewhat intense. My favorite part of this shift was when a woman and I had a very interesting conversation about witchcraft. I truly enjoyed this part.

Finally, for the final shift, we were in Ms. Mohr's room and were presenting to people who came to our booths what the project was and how we used trigonometry and such to take pictures. This was interesting because a lot of people had many interesting questions about our project.

Some strengths that I found that Christian and I displayed was that we were able to explain everything that we were asked about light. We told people the answers to their questions and more. We definetely showed the visitors how much we knew about light and how we made the cameras and why and why not our pictures came out.

During this time we came across a few obstacles. Our pictures did not come out the best, for as simple a reason as technical difficulties. It was a little tiring having to tell people the number of things that could have gone wrong with our camera. A few parents also asked some intense questions.

If we were to do exhibition again, I would definetely research my Spanish before hand, considering we did have a visitor who didn't know very much English. But, other than that, overall the exhibition night went well.

-Shellina

Character Acting Reflection

Today we did an exercise in which we were to play the part of our own characters, and portray them to the class. I played the part of Pierre Cotton, the investigator of Salem and Amelia's future lover, when they first meet. Through this process I really got a chance to learn about things deeper in Pierre's life... how he walks, how he talks, if he's deaf in one ear, how he acts under pressure, (etc.). To play him was a lot different and slightly more difficult than making him up and writing about him. You find that even if you think you know your character... you really don't.

Through watching the other acting performances I realized that when you see a character, the way they present themselves, their mannerisms, (etc.) it tells their story of their lives, because they got the idea to act like this from someone. I also realized that we should make Pierre, perhaps, a bit more exciting and put more of an edge to him. This would make Amelia's attraction to Pierre more understandable. I want to show how his values are, how he copes with things, what his beliefs are without just saying "Pierre's beliefs were bla bla bla...". I want to incorporate it into this art.

What I want to do with Pierre Cotton is I want to make him more complex, edgy, and outspoken instead of this monologued thing we have now. I want him to have a personality behind the professional skin that he is, being an investigator for a town that is "under attack" by withcraft sources.

Specifics on how we are to do this... hmm... perhaps we could give him more troubles of his own? Like, say, his mother just died or such. What we did not want to do, however, is turn this into an overwhelming story of bad things happening (if our readers want a story like that they can always read A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. I recommend the series.).

So, somehow, through the events happening (for we still aren't very sure about what exactly is going to happen in the actual story) we want to make Pierre more interesting and more complex.

Amelia, on the other hand, I thought, was portrayed very well in the performance. I thought we showed her witchy side very well and how she acted around this sudden man who comes into her home to inspect where she keeps her witchcraft tools. We got to see her lie as well, which made it all the better because that is very important in this story. Lying is the key element in The Devil's Trial. Without it the story would become deceased.

In the end I thought that most of the groups that we saw did a good job and I look forward to writing more about our characters.