Hongyi Jiang

This week, Caroline and I spent time finding the beat for our scene. And we talked about the given circumstances, the relationship between our characters and how to reinterpret the script because we decided on gender-blend one of the character from Gruesome Playground Injuries. Because in the play, we have scenes of when the two main characters were 8, 18, 23, 33 and 38, we were able to have a clear sense of each character's upbringing and how their personality came about. Because that there is also a clear love-line going on in our selected scene, we decided to commit to play the gay couple instead of being ambiguous about their romantic feelings toward each other. We also created a background story that would add to this layer of relationship:

"We have been best friends since we were 8, we have always loved each other as friends. Donna starts to think that she may be different around middle school but definitely hasn’t told a soul. When we are 13 we have the practice kiss but Kayleen does not know that Donna is gay yet. Donna tells Kayleen she is gay when they are in high school- around 14- but that she doesn’t have romantic feelings for her because she does not want to scare away her best friend even though she is in love with her and will continue to be forever. Kayleen already kind of knew Donna was gay. In high school, Donna is not out to her friends or family. She knows they are conservative Christians and doesn’t want to risk getting kicked out of her house. " -wrote by Caroline.

We also continued talking about their social status and their emotional strengths and deficits, and what their physical appearance should be. We made clear of what our character's goals were in our scene.

We also talked about how we both don't want to watch Youtube videos about other people's productions on Gruesome Playground because that would probably influence our takes on our characters.