Reflection of poem performance--Amy

In Lauren, Mia and Conner’s performance, they reflected the different attitudes of americans in the two scenarios, which emphasized the theme of this poem—African americans are citizens of the United States. In the first scene, when Lauren receives her friend to have meals at home, Conner, an African American, also wants to have dinner with her. However, Lauren's attitude clearly shows the unfriendly treatment towards the African American played by Conner. She asks Conner to have dinner in the kitchen. This is a main point which shows the background information of the second stanza of the poem. Then, in the second scene, Lauren receives friends to have dinner at home, but Conner makes a different action. He stops Lauren's command this time, moves a chair and sits down to have dinner with them. This expresses the third stanza and last sentence of the poem. The change of Conner's attitude in this performance is the key point. For this point, Conner does a few details particularly well. First, when he moved the chair to sit down, he put the chair loudly, which showed his aggressiveness. Lauren, who wants to command Conner as before, was shocked by this movement. I think the only difference between the performance and poem is the content of the third stanza. In the poem, the poet wrote that “They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed”. However, we did not see the “beautiful” of this African American, nor the “shamed” Americans. I really appreciate the performance. It is complete, has a clear theme, and the actors have details to support the performance.

I was impressed by Tony and Ryan’s performance. When I first time read the poem, “Mother to son”, I felt so confused. I was kind of understanding the theme of this poem, but I did not know what happening until I watched the Tony and Ryan’s performance. That makes a lot of sense for me. In their performance, they showed the change of attitude both for the mom and the son. Difficulties, hope and courage are the main themes of the poem. The poem explores one's attitude and determination when people faced with problems. In the performance, Tony played a mother surrounded by life difficulties. Although she knows how hard life is, she still encourages her son to overcome obstacles with optimism. She believes that life is full of challenges and puzzles that one should have the courage and determination to face. Throughout the poem, she teaches her son to continue to strive with patience, resilience and hope to set an example for his own life. During Ryan's performance, I felt the emotional ups and downs. At first, he came back from college very upset and disappointed. Then Tony tried to enlightened him. But he didn't think his mother understood him. So he got angry and left the room. Then his mother wrote a letter for him. Ryan was very moved and understood what his mother meant. I think Tony and Ryan are very innovative. This is a very reasonable scene and applies to the content of the poem. At the same time, it embodies the main character characteristics of the characters in the poem. In the performance, Tony's behavior reminded me of my mother's behavior when she sometimes enlightened me. My mother's positive attitude always inspires me.