It’s time for blog post #2 on DI, and if don’t already know what DI is you can go to my first DI blog post where I explain in further detail. But basically DI is a educational experience in which you’ll have to creatively think and come up with original ideas. It encourages you step outside your comfort zone, when doing things like performing in front of an audience. There is five challenges, being improv, scientific, technical, engineering, and fine arts (which is the one my team did.) DI is a way to learn and grow skills, which it is proven to help you do better at certain things, which you can read into, but I definitely agree with somethings mentioned on their website. Toward the end of the blog post I will throughly explain how it helped my learning, which this is just another aspect of DI.

What Went Wrong at Regionals 

 After completing the regionals performance we already knew some things that would have to be changed and added. First off we didn’t really know how to work the projector so it took way to long to set up and the picture it projected didn’t look as good as we thought as you couldn’t really tell what it was. We also ended up under the time limit by quite a bit despite the projector problems. Some feedback back we received was that some people didn’t really know what was going on at some parts, so we would have to describe things better. We soon realized that our set had little to no props for the set, which didn’t do well for scoring. Something else that also didn’t scorew as well as we had hoped was one of our team choice elements, which was gymnastics, so we planned open changing that to something more creative. Those were definitely some of the major problems that we knew we would have to change, but we did like how the songs went.

What we Changed

Nik, Izzy, Lucy and I had the change of tune challenge, which we knew after regionals there was definitely many things we could change and add to improve the musical overall. We asked some people about what they liked and what they didn’t, and we came up with a few ideas ourselves. One of the first changes we made was switching Lucy’s and Nik’s parts. Lucy was originally the narrator, and Nik was just an old guy stuck on the island with Izzy and I. So we gave Lucy the part of our mom as we thought it would make more sense, and Nik played the part as the narrator. This change definitely made a difference in our musical as we weren’t really feeling their parts before the switch. It also definitely added to the musical as in the script he talks about how he was “originally in the musical” but apparently “didn’t have enough talent” adding some more humour.

After switching up the characters we then went on to add a whole other scene. We noticed at regionals that we didn’t get the best score on how clear the storyline was. As at first Evie just mentioned how a old man gave her a boat, which didn’t make much sense and was very random. So we added a scene where Evie goes to the other island and talks to the old man who gives her a boat, helping them escape the island. But she could only get the boat on one condition she has to sing, for the rest of her life (or rather the rest on the play.) Which added an interesting twist which I think the judges enjoyed. This scene didn’t only add to the storyline but also some humour was included. Nik played the old man, and did a quick costume change by adding a mustache, and a different shirt then he did as the narrator.

Finally our last change, was simple but effective, we added some new props to the set, as we discovered our set was quite bland. The props would also be on our new team choice element as before we had gymnastics and it didn’t score as well as we hoped.  Along with adding a palm tree, to better show we are on a island, we added a wheel that would be onstage when we are in the boat. We used foam board and coloured paper for the palm tree, and pool noodles, and foam board for the wheel. These didn’t only act as props though, as we also used them to hide the projector so it looked better.

What Provincials Looked Like

At provincials we made sure we knew how to use the projector before going on stage, as we made the mistake of not testing it at regionals. I think we definitely did better then last time, even though we did run into some problems. First off we didn’t know who was taking what onto the stage which it ended up taking us a minute and thirty seconds to set up in total. We also made some minor mistakes like messing up a few lines, but it didn’t affect us to much, other then that we missed a few ques during the play like the boat horn etc. Of course the major problem is that we didn’t get to finish as the timer ran out, and it happened to end in the middle of our last song. Overall everything leading up to when the time stopped went pretty well and I feel like we all performed our best. Toward the end of the day we had our instant challenge, which didn’t go as good as we hoped, but we definitely tried our hardest and it wasn’t an easy challenge.

If you would like to see the improvements from our first performance at regionals to our second at provincials you can go watch our regionals performance which you can find on my last DI post, and you can watch our provincials performance below.

What I Learned and What I’m Proud of

Overall I’m proud of all of us for getting up on that stage and performing, even if we were nervous. From this experience I’ve taken away a few things like at  regionals I was so nervous to perform, but at provincials even though I was still kind of nervous I definitely felt better about going on the stage. I also definitely started to think more creatively as I was encouraged to come up with create outside of the box ideas. We would also have to do some improv and if you forgot any lines or things like that, so quick creative thinking. On the DI website they talk about how DI benefits your learning. Which I feel like I have beCome more engaged and imaginative when completing tasks, as DI has encouraged me to do more creative thinking, also making me more creative. I have also become more confident when performing on stage, as in the beginning I was so nervous when performing, but by our last performance I definitely felt better about going on stage. DI has also got me to elaborate on and generate more ideas as so much idea generation was put into DI throughout the whole process. I have definitely become better at working in groups as we have spent so much time together and have learned to be more accepting of each other’s ideas. Overall I’m definitely glad I had this experience, but given a choice I’m not sure I would do it again.

– Paisley