Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Speech Meet: Another Perspective

A walk on the dark side and on the bright side at a local speech meet.

I critiqued at a speech meet recently. While I feel most of the students did a really good job and all have potential, I guess I have an overall feeling of a loss of innocence.

I did a round of dramatic interpretation and it was all mental disorders and abuse. One of the questions on the evaluation was something to the effect: do you feel the speaker had insight into the mood and meaning of the author? I felt like saying, “Not really, and I hope to gosh she never does.”

Whatever happened to first love, the death of a pet, or being in a new school for dramatic interpretation?

Poetry interpretation was a little better. There was one young man whose theme for his recitation was poems on poetry. Granted, we’re supposed to evaluate their selections for literary merit, but wasn’t this a little obvious? It was sad in a way, because his delivery was on the corny side, but he had a good voice. (The kind of voice, if used right, can make “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” sound like Shakespeare.)This kid could have done “Charge of the Light Brigade,” something from “Beowulf,” or “Morte d’Arthur” or “To an Athlete Dying Young” and really made hay from it.

However, another young lady did a selection that had more abuse and misery in it. She did a really good job, but again, what happened to innocence?

Finally, in original oratory, we had gay marriage and the threats of natural disasters and terrorism. Two out of the five were inspirational/motivational in nature, and the third criticized parents (justly, actually). So it wasn’t all despair.

Extemporaneous speaking is painful just because it’s a tough thing to do.

Humor was good.

On the bright side, it was really good to see youngsters who were interested in current events and reading something besides the lyrics on the latest rap album. They were respectful of the judges, the other adults and each other. More power to them. So I suppose I’ll do it again.