Large Group Speech

Another part of my senior year has come and gone. Large group speech starts in November, pretty much once the fall drama production is over. It ended this Monday when the All-State Participates were announced. I've been in speech all four years of high school (one of only two females in my class who can say that) and I'm going to miss it like crazy!


        In the past I have worked with larger groups (one act play and reader's theater) but this year I opted to work with two very small groups. Musical theater (a category I've been in all four years), and an ensemble with my twin sister. That makes a grand total of 5 people that I was working with.

        For musical theater, we decided on Little Shop of Horrors. Little Shop is hard enough to pull off as a stage production, littered with props and complex set pieces (think about a mechanical plant that is large enough to swallow a human being). Condense it to a ten minute, six man/lady show with six chairs and a table, and your creativity is definitely tested.
      I played the plant, aka Audrey II, a character typically played by a man. I like to be challenged, and the vocalization of this character was definitely a challenge for me. But it was fun. We found ways to hide people behind tables and make them look like plant tentacles, and tweeked it little by little until we really had something special. We got straight I's a state (the best rating possible). We didn't make it to All-State, but we made the audience laugh. I had a kid that I didn't even know come up to me afterwords and say "I'm a huge fan of that show, and you guys did amazing!". To me, there is not greater compliment than to know that you kept someone's love for a show in tact.

    For Ensemble Acting, my sister and I did a short play called "Ship of Fools". To be perfectly honest, when we first started readings of the script I did not like it. I down right hated it. I reluctantly memorized my lines and showed up to practices.
    Why didn't I like the script? I didn't get it. It's a very weird piece. And here I am, saying I like to be challenged and here was a challenge that I didn't even want to look at.
   I did eventually embrace the script and figured out some ways to connect with it. We got split I's at state, but we are proud of what we did. We made something pretty special.

   Now time for individual speech, the only place where seeing students talk to inanimate objects is considered completely normal! Wish me luck broken legs!