"Quiz"

Poem performances reflection
By Dasha Ialovega
01/11/19
Lit and Performance IB

The first poem performance I have chosen is Mother to Son by Amy, Cole, and Percy. The group decided to include every single word of the poem in the performance, so the main focus was representing the words and their meaning in real-life action. Therefore, there was no big difference from the original poem. They emphasized acting out the lyrics, as viewing the poem, rather than just reading it, has a much stronger effect on the audience. The poem is about a mother talking to her son about how difficult life is, but no matter how hard it is, he should never give up. The group had a narrator that was reading the poem out loud, and a mother and a son acting out the poem's meaning. This triggered a stronger viewers' emotion compared to the emotion they felt just by seeing the poem on the screen, so in this case, the group was quite successful.

The second poem performance I have selected is I, Too by Abraham, Johnathan, and Zach. At the beginning of the poem, the author seemed to be angry and upset about their position in society and how African-Americans were treated. Although the poet was frustrated, they still had hope and believed that one day the African-Americans would be accepted and welcomed by society. Towards the end of the poem the acceptance they sought started appearing, to finally result in them being treated equally and the author speaking with relief about being welcomed in society. The actors included all the lyrics in the poem in their performance, and therefore they decided to emphasize the sign-language in order to link their actions with the words and strengthen the influence of the lyrics on the audience. The handshake they did implies the way different races started viewing each other, in this case, it is everyone being equal. They did a live-action of the poem so there was nothing extremely different from the text, but seeing the lyrics in the real world had a way stronger effect on the viewers.