Wednesday, 19 December 2012
My holiday break began at approximately 12:30 this afternoon. Yes, yes, I still had to finish work today, and there are still two more days of work to go this week, but the tough stuff is all over.
As I mentioned in my last post (see: Last Post), school is done for the semester as of yesterday. But, as of early this afternoon, I also completed one of the toughest speeches I had to deliver in Toastmasters.
After completing the Competant Communicator book back in May, I needed to select two books from the Advanced Communicator series. One of the books I chose was Interpretive Reading. My hope was that this book would make me a better public reader (which I have done with increasing frequency lately, having had my writing published in a couple of books). But I also figured it would be an easy book to get through, since I wouldn’t have to write any speeches, I would just have to read stuff. And easy is good, since I’m often busy with homework these days.
Well, it started off easy enough; I just had to read a short story. Then there was a poetry reading, which I managed well enough. Well, for speech #3 in the book, I had to recite a monologue.
Okay, first: Recite? Yikes. I can’t memorize entire monologues!
And, second: Monologue? What was I supposed to do, find a Saturday Night Live bit I liked and memorize that? The assignment did say that I could use a stirring speech, but assignment #5 is a recitation of a speech, and I didn’t want to duplicate.
Well… I ended up choosing a speech anyway. I couldn’t find any monologues I liked, so, after posting for suggestions on Facebook, one of my friends suggested Chaplin’s closing speech from his 1940 film The Great Dictator. I actually found this movie kind of boring and overwrought, but the closing speech is among the best five minutes in the history of cinema.
So, after introducing the speech – by drawing attention to Chaplin’s reluctance to move from silent film to talkie, and his desire to draw attention to the plight of citizens in Germany – I recited this:
What a brilliant speech. I have never heard that before. How did it go?
Yeah, it’s a great speech at the end of a pretty decent movie.
The speech went well. I wish I could have memorized it, but that was pretty impossible for me. I knew it very well, though, so I only had to look at my notes every once in a while. Everyone seemed to like it, and my evaluator marked me pretty high on all the points I was working on.
I’m glad it’s over, though.