Julia Rose Duray 1.23.

12 Analysis and Performance of Literature Poetry Performance

The staging was set so that the audience faced the blackboard in front of which there was a long desk and a chair. Maria entered from the door to the left angrily with a bouquet of fake flowers in her hand, storming across the stage and sitting down in the chair. She also threw down the bouquet and proceeded to say the poem in a bitter and resentful tone, using props to illustrate each of the lines, such as bringing out her key lanyard at the line the history of this keychain hates you. Though she stayed seated the entire time, as the poem progressed her tone became more and more tender and she seemed conflicted. She picked the bouquet of flowers back up, began picking at it almost in a loving or nostalgic way for the line I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one individually and at leisure. By the end of the poem she was holding the bouquet again and was speaking in a much calmer tone. Her emotional arc both in tone of voice as well as harshness of physicality portrayed the arc of the poem in which the speaker seems to be grappling with her frustration towards her lover as well as the deep intimacy and underlying affection that she feels for them. The tenderness inevitably underlying all of her superficial hatred creeped into her physicality as she sat down, and her fixation at the end of the poem represented a sort of reconciliation with the understanding that she would never be able to completely combat her feelings. She seemed to be struggling in her tone of voice with the line between hatred and love, an important theme in the poem.

I found the use of the bouquet of flowers to be very effective not only because it clearly was symbol of her relationship that helped her physically show the audience her feelings toward her lover (or whomever the poem is about). I also felt like her entrance, which was unexpected and also captured the audience, helped set the tone of the poem before she had even really begun the performance. The fact that she was seated throughout the performance underlined the deliberation element of the poem, the idea that this is one person sitting alone pouring out her feelings and trying to work through them. At the same time I would have liked to see more varied movement and greater physicalization of the poem considering that it is so full of vibrant and specific images. I also think that the use of the keychain and the throwing of the hat were unnecessary because I think the greater theme of poem (the line between love/hate and the idea that passion that underwrites both emotions) is much more interesting than the specific lines, so if there were a way to depict the larger ideas rather than the minute details it might help the performance. The whole point of the poem is that these comparisons she is making are unimportant because really they are empty wordsshe doesnt really feel hatred for this person, just passion. Because of this, these images should not play such a significant role in performance. Yes, there is a certain energy they bring to the poem, and a sense of being at such a level of frustration that one is unable to fully express it in a concise way, but I think this uncontrollable passion would be better expressed through a changing and developing physicality as the poem progresses (matching the emotional arc she had already established vocally).