Using Stimuluses to Make a Final Performance :: Acting Education Drama Theatre Essays

Using Stimuluses to Make a Final Performance For our drama portfolio we were given many different stimuli to work with that all gave us different ideas for our final performance. I choose two stimuli and used them to develop ideas. My first stimulus I would like to talk about is a sentence about poppies that was given to us. We took our stimulus and brainstormed ideas. We looked at different drama strategies to employ that would help us understand the text. The sentence, which was about poppies made us concentrate on the aspect of war. Therefore death was the main idea but not necessarily due to war but to other reasons. Poppies are red and red symbolises blood, death, danger, wrong and love. As well as the performance consisting of pain an idea would be to also portray love. So we were thinking of a performance with a contrast of love and death. Loss will convey the blood death and danger so we should use loss as a main element within the piece. However, we were forgetting what poppies actually are flowers. This obvious aspect should be included, as a poppy is obviously a flower and death is an obvious element within war. They are both stating the obvious and therefore some strategies should be used to gain ideas from this aspect of poppies. We used hot seating on someone who is a presenter at a garden show. We selected some sentences about flowers and thought of using narrating to say them. At the same we created some still images that were related to the text to investigate the link between the poppies and the idea of dying in war. We now had a few initial ideas that could be developed further and used within our final piece. My second stimulus was to be put in the position of a mother. I was told that my son had been missing in action and I receive a letter from him which is back dated two months ago. We took our stimulus and started to create ideas again. We took into account the time period and how life would be different then. We concentrated on the parent’s and son’s relationship and the parent’s priorities. What would be the most important thing in their life at that moment in time? There were many aspects to consider so we decided to use hot seating as our first strategy. We also had to consider the conditions the son was living in as it was set in the war. It was important for the audience to understand the atmosphere not only with the setting but within the

Writing and Reflection Paper

Start with writing the first draft. Describe your reflective essay project. How did it contribute to your self development? Evaluate the quality of your work within your reflective essay. Did you achieve your goals? Tell how you might have made your project better. Revise your first draft. Be complete when telling â€Å"what happened† and use descriptive details to describe your actions. Stick to the point. Concentrate on your reflective essay project as a whole and include the details that really affected the final outcome of the project. Tell about your experiences while working on your essay. Answer the question: â€Å"What did you learn?† Write in a clear style that your reader can understand. Show your essay to a friend for helpful feedback.Some Helpful Tips:What to IncludeWhen writing a reflection paper on literature or another experience, the point is to include your thoughts and reactions to the reading or experience. You can present your feelings upon reading w hat you read and why. You can also use a reflection paper to analyze what you have read. Just like in any other paper or essay, be cohesive, refer to the specific passage or quote the material that drew this feeling, reflection or analysis from you and why. It is okay to include personal experience in a reflection paper, but do not depend on it; base your reactions and reflections in the material that is your subject.What to Leave OutDo not use a reflection paper to simply summarize what you have read or done. It is also recommended not to use a reflection paper as a free flow of ideas and thoughts. Again, the idea of a reflection paper is to write an essay describing your reactions and analysis to a reading or other experience; however, it is more formal than a journal entry, so leave out informal language and form.How to Organize Your ThoughtsA reflection paper should be organized as you would another formal essay. Be sure to include an introduction, perhaps that suggests what you r  expectations were on the reading or experience beforehand. You may also want to summarize the conclusions you came to in the introduction. Then move on to the body of your paper, explain separately the conclusions you have come to and why, basing your conclusions in concrete details from your reading and experience. End the paper with a conclusion that sums up what you got from the reading. You might want to refer back to what your conclusions are in relation to your expectations or come to some other conclusion or analysis about the text or experience in light of your feelings and reactions.

History †bisness plan Essay

The owners of Excel Hygiene have been colleagues in a company which operated on a national scale, converting urban organic waste in to natural fertilizers for crop production in farms. This company has decided to focus on the rural sector and does not wish to expand its urban operations. Its major customer group is of farmers and owners of plantations. It has considered and rejected plans to enter health care lines. The agriculture and rural marketing business, while voluminous, is subject to the vagaries of nature. It is also intensely competitive, with narrow margins and uncertain demand levels. The bio-medical waste sector, on the other hand, is a rapidly rising star on the economic horizon. Demand for health care services is growing and assured. The number of competitors, as seen earlier, is limited, and consequently the margins are relatively attractive. The sector demands very high levels of service, but pay-offs are matching. Biotechnology is versatile with many future sectors which Excel Hygiene can address. There are many useful microbes in nature and their isolation and culture is relatively easy for those in the know. The owners of Excel Hygiene have succeeded in preparing and agreeing on a business plan. The latter has found favor with venture capitalists looking for biotech opportunities, so the company could be funded without denting the personal savings of the promoters too seriously. A crucial factor has been the timeliness of the new enterprise, though its aggression in bidding for a substantial price premium from the beginning is founded more on technical considerations of the safety advantage than any standard financial or economic wisdom. Market Definition Excel Hygiene plans to be a niche player with a very conservative market share target of just 1%. The first reason for this is the high premium the company wishes to charge for its differentiated products and services. It is possible that hospitals and doctors who do not attach much value to safety will not be willing to pay the higher prices. Further, health care institutions are conservative customers, and will take time to accept services from a new provider. The financiers behind the new enterprise also prefer quick and assured payback with high percentage returns to large volumes and top line growth. The entry strategy of Excel Hygiene is to secure contracts in relatively low-risk units of top quality institutions. Word of mouth promotion is very important in the health care community, so the new enterprise has to ensure that the most prestigious customers join its ranks first. The risks of switching to a new service provider are daunting in life saving units, but it is much easier to induce switches in routine areas. Excel hygiene will target waiting areas, food preparation zones, and general wards for its entry, staying away from competitive strongholds in Intensive Care and Casualty units. Excel Hygiene plans to hold seminars and to participate in scientific meetings on infection control to ensure word of mouth promotion of its services and image. Special efforts will be made to make spokespeople out of the best known doctors, surgeons, and para-medical workers, so that branding has a firm and stable base. The financial plans provide for this first phase to last the first full year of operations, and the second year will be used to leverage the accumulated goodwill by tripling the relatively small revenues of the first year. Excel Hygiene will invest in free demonstrations of its services for the first 6 months, backed by microbiology tests. This is to establish the reliability of the company’s services and to prove the efficacies of its novel range of biological products. The company will aim to have the results of these trials published, so that the investment can result in high growth during the second year of operations. A final element of strategy will be to liaise with regulatory authorities for endorsement of the company’s novel products. This approach will help to consolidate the small market share that the company hopes to forge within 2 years, and to protect its revenues during the subsequent years. The company hopes to excel by defining its business scope, territorial spread, and customer definition very tightly, seeking to specialize in a niche area. The emphasis is also on reassuring financiers since the company does not have a prior establishment in the market of substantial fixed asset covers. This conservative approach may be reviewed once the company has achieved its targets for the first five years. Quantitatively, Excel Hygiene targets net revenues of $500 thousand in the first year, rising to over $2 million by year 5. However, the major growth is expected during the second year itself. The infrastructure which has been planned will not allow full service coverage of more than 500 client units at a time within the designated territory. Hence, growth from the third year onwards will be marginal. It is typical in this business to suffer some client turnover, though it is equally possible to canvass for new contracts. Incineration and treatment capacities are other constraints to bear in mind.

The Story of Ray Bradbury essays

The Story of Ray Bradbury essays Seldom does a visionary come along with the foresight and imagination to take people to the future; Ray Bradbury is one of those visionaries. Ray Bradbury has had such an impact on the world that the full magnitude of his contribution may never be truly known. Generations have been inspired by his works, his dreams for a utopian society. About the only thing that critics cannot agree upon is whether Bradbury writes Science Fiction or Fantasy. The rift between the two genres is not easily bridged. A second rift exists between the two genres and what society views as true art. Societys view of literary art does not often include Science Fiction. Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920 to Leonard Spalding Bradbury and Ester Marie Bradbury. Bradburys twin brothers Leonard and Samuel were born in 1916; Samuel died in 1918, and Bradburys sister Elizabeth was born six years later in 1926. Bradbury attended public school in Waukegan, Tucson, and Los Angeles. He discovered science fiction in Amazing Stories, a popular magazine of its day, in 1928. Bradbury wrote his first stories on butcher paper at a young age. In 1932, Bradbury performed as an amateur magician at Oddfellows Hall and American Legion. He read comics to children on radio station KGAR (Bloom 141). In 1934 in Los Angeles, Bradbury worked as a live audience for the Burns and Allen radio show. He acted as scriptwriter, producer, and director of the Roman Review at Los Angles High School and joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League in 1937. He graduated from high school in 1938. In 1939, he published his own fan magazine, F uturia Fantasia, attended the World Science Fiction Convention in New York, and joined actress Laraine Days drama group, the Wilshire Players Guild. His high school yearbook named him headed for literary distinction (Bloom 142). ...

6 Common Myths About Language and Grammar

6 Common Myths About Language and Grammar In the book Language Myths, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill (Penguin, 1998), a team of leading linguists set out to challenge some of the conventional wisdom about language and the way it works. Of the 21 myths or misconceptions they examined, here are six of the most common. The Meanings of Words Should Not Be Allowed to Vary or Change Peter Trudgill, now an honorary professor of sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia in England, recounts the history of the word nice to illustrate his point that the English language is full of words which have changed their meanings slightly or even dramatically over the centuries. Derived from the Latin adjective nescius (meaning not knowing or ignorant), nice arrived in English around 1300 meaning silly, foolish, or shy. Over the centuries, its meaning gradually changed to fussy, then refined, and then (by the end of the 18th century) pleasant and agreeable. Trudgill observes that none of us can unilaterally decide what a word means. Meanings of words are shared between peoplethey are a kind of social contract we all agree tootherwise, communication would not be possible. Children Cant Speak or Write Properly Any More Though upholding educational standards is important, says linguist James Milroy, there is, in reality, nothing to suggest that todays youngsters are less competent at speaking and writing their native language than older generations of children were. Going back to Jonathan Swift (who blamed linguistic decline on the Licentiousness which entered with the Restoration), Milroy notes that every generation has complained about deteriorating standards of ​literacy. He points out that over the past century general standards of literacy have, in fact, steadily risen. According to the myth, there has always been a Golden Age when children could write much better than they can now. But as Milroy concludes, There was no Golden Age. America Is Ruining the English Language John Algeo, professor emeritus of English at the University of Georgia, demonstrates some of the ways in which Americans have contributed to changes in English vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation. He also shows how American English has retained some of the characteristics of 16th-century English that have disappeared from present-day British. American is not corrupt British plus barbarisms. . . . Present-day British is no closer to that earlier form than present-day American is. Indeed, in some ways present-day American is more conservative, that is, closer to the common original standard, than is present-day English. Algeo notes that British people tend to be more aware of American innovations in language than Americans are of British ones. The cause of that greater awareness may be a keener linguistic sensitivity on the part of the British, or a more insular anxiety and hence irritation about influences from abroad. TV Makes People Sound the Same J. K. Chambers, a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, counters the common view that television and other popular media are steadily diluting regional speech patterns. The media do play a role, he says, in the spread of certain words and expressions. But at the deeper reaches of language changesound changes and grammatical changesthe media have no significant effect at all. According to sociolinguists, regional dialects continue to diverge from standard dialects throughout the English-speaking world. And while the media can help to popularize certain slang expressions and catch-phrases, its pure linguistic science fiction to think that television has any significant effect on the way we pronounce words or put together sentences. The biggest influence on language change, Chambers says, is not Homer Simpson or Oprah Winfrey. It is, as it always has been, face-to-face interactions with friends and colleagues: it takes real people to make an impression. Some Languages Are Spoken More Quickly Than Others Peter Roach, now an emeritus professor of phonetics at Reading University in England, has been studying speech perception throughout his career. And what has he found out? That theres no real difference between different languages in terms of sounds per second in normal speaking cycles. But surely, youre saying, theres a rhythmical difference between English (which is classed as a stress-timed language) and, say, French or Spanish (classed as syllable-timed). Indeed, Roach says, it usually seems that syllable-timed speech sounds faster than stress-timed to speakers of stress-timed languages. So Spanish, French, and Italian sound fast to English speakers, but Russian and Arabic dont. However, different speech rhythms dont necessarily mean different speaking speeds. Studies suggest that languages and dialects just sound faster or slower, without any physically measurable difference. The apparent speed of some languages might simply be an illusion. You Shouldnt Say It Is Me Because Me Is Accusative According to Laurie Bauer, professor of theoretical and descriptive linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, the It is I rule is just one example of how the rules of Latin grammar have been inappropriately forced on English. In the 18th century, Latin was widely viewed as the language of refinementclassy and conveniently dead. As a result, a number of grammar mavens set out to transfer this prestige to English by importing and imposing various Latin grammatical rulesregardless of actual English usage and normal word patterns. One of these inappropriate rules was an insistence on using the nominative I after a form of the verb to be. Bauer argues that theres no point in avoiding normal English speech patternsin this case, me, not I, after the verb. And theres no sense in imposing the patterns of one language on another. Doing so, he says, is like trying to make people play tennis with a golf club.

Modern Marriage, only a status symbol Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Modern Marriage, only a status symbol - Essay Example The Modern American wedding has become much more of commercial saga generating a massive turnover every year. Wedding planners, florists, caterers, hairstylists, clothes, designers, have all got their fortunes connected to the wedding industry. According to statistics 2 "the average American wedding costs $22,360 and has 168 guests, who give 100 gifts that cost an average of $85 each, meaning the net loss to the couple is $13,860..the average guest spends $500 to attend a wedding-not including plane tickets." The statistics do not end here though. The figures get more and more perturbing as it is revealed that "43% of couples say they spent more on their wedding than they had planned."3There is an increase in thematic weddings like Disney World "Fairy Tale Wedding" where for the price of $2,500 a bride can arrive in a glass coach pulled by four dappled gray ponies.4 All these figures and statistics really provoke a disturbing query in our minds which is whether the modern commercial marriage is now deinstitutionalized to the extent of a mere commercial saga The United States has seen deterioration in the institution of marriage during the past many decades (Cherlin 2004:848-861). There has been a transition of the essence of marriage from So is it possible to say that while the practical importance of marriage has hit an all time low, it has gained a symbolic significance Is it merely a mark of prestige and personal achievement Consider only some of the expenses the modern bride and groom go through for the ceremony of marriage. According to a commercial website 5,the Groom pays for the Bride's rings, Boutonnire for the groom and ushers ,groom's present to bridegroom's presents to ushers and best man, ties and gloves for the ushers ,clergy member's cost ,corsages for the immediate members of both families; also the bride's going away corsage ,bachelor dinner (optional, and usually given by best man or ushers) ,rehearsal dinner (optional, but is usual) ,accommodations for out-of-town ushers and the honeymoon. This list is not exhaustive though and the bride has to pay for a similar list of expenditure. What happens then, after such a grand wedding Every year the government issues alarming figures of divorce rate statistics, many homes are broken and the children are displaced. Academic opinion and research has spoken of the weakening of the social norms that regulate people's behaviour in this regard. This is another symbol of the deteriorating society where there is a sort of a "taken-for-granted" norm that allows people to go on with their lives with nobody questioning their behaviour (Cherlin2004:848-849, Whitehead 2001:6-16). The wedding as a status symbol Recent weddings have become little less than individual achievements. "In the distant past, a wedding was an event at which two kinship groups formed an alliance. More recently, it has been an event organized and paid for by parents, at which they display their approval and support for their child's marriage" (Cherlin 2004:848-849) So despite its destabilisation as an "institution", the American Wedding has become "an

LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN - Compare & contrast humanitarian & Essay

LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN - Compare & contrast humanitarian & business supply chains. Provide anD analysis of similarities & d - Essay Example Though the supply chain strategies in both the cases aim at efficiency, there are differences arising due to the objectives, nature and goals of the operations, the management structure and management style. Blecken, A. (2010, p. 8) states â€Å"Thomas and Kopezak (2006) see the lack of recognition of importance of supply chain management and logistics in humanitarian organizations as a challenge to efficient and effective logistics and supply chain management†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This observation is in contrast to the recognition of its importance given by the private businesses, though an encouraging trend is evolving in humanitarian supply chain. I Factors differentiating humanitarian and business supply chains Factors differentiating humanitarian and business supply chains are discussed in this section. Though the operational strategy in the case of both humanitarian and business supply chain basically involves procurement, storage, transportation and distribution, similarities and dif ferences relative to these functions in respect of humanitarian and business supply chains are discussed separately under section II for understanding of the operational issues in proper perspective. Stakeholders The primary stakeholders in the humanitarian supply chain are the people affected by earth quakes, floods and other natural calamities; afflicted by epidemics, poverty or other events. Unlike the customers or suppliers of a business organization who comes to do business with the corporations or associate with them as employees, the humanitarian organizations are involved in the rescue or rehabilitation operations of unknown people from different parts of the world in need of assistance and support. These people are not related to other stakeholders like donors, service providers, NGOs or other agencies and the service to humanity is the cornerstone of these humanitarian organizations. Management structure The management structure of humanitarian organizations is not uniform as in the case of private corporations with a defined hierarchy and chain of command. Lack of accountability is a systematic problem in the charitable organizations. However, Tomasini & Wassenhove (2004, p. 446) noted that in the case of humanitarian supply management system (SUMA) developed by Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in El Salvador a public-private commission was set up, including Price Waterhouse and KPMG Peat Marwick to audit the reception and distribution of goods as well as the management of funds. SUMA has successfully overcome the inherent weakness in the management structure of the humanitarian supply chain. Coordination with the Stakeholders Humanitarian operations are complex with different stakeholders such as government agencies, local authorities, private sector corporations, service providers, goods suppliers, large and small aid agencies and NGOs apart from the communities involved. Adherence to the humanitarian principles in the activities at all lev els and ensuring relief without partiality or discrimination is very important for sustaining the confidence level and trust of the donors and other stakeholders for their continued assistance and support. Infrastructure facilities Problems faced by a typical humanitarian orga