Speech

This upcomming weekend is Districts for our speech team. First of all let me explain speech because a lot of people have misconceptions about it. It is not standing in front of a group of people talking. Speech is basically acting. There are different categories such as group and solo mime, improv, choral reading, readers theatre, one act play, ensemble acting and musical theatre. There is also some categories that are non performing such as short film, radio broadcasting and TV. news broadcasting. A student can only be in two events (maximum) each year.

I have done speech for three years now and I have been in short film, radio broadcasting, TV. news, choral reading and group mime. I have really enjoyed speech because it helps with class presentations. It is also a way for people to be involved in theatre without being in a play. At my school we have two musicals, and one regular play per year. I am not a singer whatsoever so I can only try out for the non-musical play. I go to a very large high school so there are a lot of people trying out for the plays. Our last non-musical play was Rumors and it had a cast of about 12 people. So as you can tell this really limits a persons chance of being cast. Speech gives a lot of people opportunities to act that wouldn't have gotten a chance and that is why I love it so much.

Another reason as to why I love speech is that the competitions are so much fun. After you are done performing you can go watch other performances. It is really fun to go support your classmates and watch other schools perform. My favorite categories to watch are choral reading, readers theatre, mime and improv. I just find those categories fun to watch because they are they aren't too long and I have some experience with them. This year should be even more fun because we got more of our friends to sign up this year. For the last two years it has been me and two of my friends but this year we convinced some of our other friends to sign up too.

This weekend is the first competition of three. If you get a one at districts you get to move on to state. At state you have 3 judges and to move on you have to get three ones and be recommended by two judges to make it to all state. It is very hard to get an all state nomination. At all state you can win a banner for the category that you performed in but only one school takes home the banner. For example our improv team took home the banner for  the last two years, which is a huge honor.

This year my school is also hosting the state competition which is pretty exciting. Being the host school means that every student has to have a "job" during the day. Some of the jobs are timer, room chair and hallway monitor. Timer just times the performance and tells the performers when they have to stop. Room chair opens the door to the center when it is about to begin and crosses off the list of performances. Hallway monitor makes sure that people are quiet in the hallways outside of centers that have performances going on.

I guess my purpose of this blog is to tell people what speech is really about. Hopefully, if you aren't in speech right now you consider it because it is really fun. Thanks for reading:)