Speechful People

I went to see Tim Miller perform his monologue "Lay of the Land" at the Vortex Theatre in Austin on January 29. After the performance, I bought him a glass of red wine, to make sure he would recognize me, since that was my excuse to introduce myself last time he had performed here, and was a prelude to a faithful-if-distant Facebook acquaintance with him.

Tim was of course surrounded by admirers, but he kept introducing me to them as "my friend Claude" so that gave me an excuse to hang around for a while. Two of the people who were talking to him, Melissa and Kile ("legally it's Kyle, but in life I spell it Kile, it's my one act of rebellion," he told a judge at the tournament I will talk about later), are part of the UT Speech program, which is not in the Drama department as one might suspect, but in the Communications department. Kile talked about work done with high-school students, for which Tim's monologues were one of the sources, which I found fascinating given how much "in your face" Tim's work can be.

So I asked Kile and Melissa more about the UT Speech program, because I really had no idea what this whole subculture is (since then, I've mentioned this to a couple of people, who both said "oh yes, I used to do this when I was in college"). They said that there is a whole schedule of contests between colleges in different cities, and that in the fall in particular, they are at some event in Houston almost every week-end. They advised me to look at the program's Web site. I then e-mailed the team's director, Randy Cox, to ask if there was a schedule of upcoming events. He said the season was essentially over, but that there was a contest at Texas A&M during the week-end of February 6-7. Since I was planning to drive from Austin to Houston on the 7^th anyway, I decided to make a detour through College Station and see what this was all about.

I ended up attending two of the finals, and was fascinated by this world that was unknown to me until then. The one thing I still do not understand is why these speech tournaments take place in basement rooms and are not made into public events, which might attract donations and at least publicity.

Imagine a bunch of college kids (mostly young men, although there were a few women, and there was some good diversity in terms of ethnic origins), wearing suits and ties, carrying small vinyl binders the size of a book. This makes the men at least look like preachers! The little black book contains the script or story from which they perform, although they have almost totally memorized their texts, so they only refer to the book on rare occasions to jog their memory, or use its opening and closing for dramatic effect. At least this is what they do during the "prose" events, which are basically readings of short texts (composed from key passages of longer works) with some interpretive acting thrown in, and the "duo interpretation" events, in which a couple, usually a mixed-gender one, blends multiple texts into a story they act together.

I often listen to Public Radio International's Selected Shorts while driving between Austin and Houston. During this captivating program, great actors read short stories on stage. The college speech contest was better in several ways: first, I could see the students in front of me, a few feet away; second, they put a lot more passion and dramatization in their reading that is done in a program like Selected Shorts; and third, this was as good as going to a performance at a playhouse... but free.

The typical way these interpretive readings are done follows a specific routine: the performer (or performers, in the case of the Duo event) read a first paragraph of the story, setting the stage and whetting the viewer's appetite. Then they close their book rather ostentatiously, implying that they are now departing from the text, and give a short introduction to the work and its meaning; they conclude that part by stating the title and author. Then they re-open their book (mostly for effect, to indicate that they are going back to the text) and resume where they left off after the interest-provoking opening.

There are other types of events -- one is about persuasive speaking (convincing the listener of a point), another about talking about a subject with minimal preparation, another about giving an entertaining after-dinner talk.

I took some notes about the six stories that were competing in the Prose finals. Today, I used those notes to research the authors and titles of the works (I found four out of six -- thank you Google) because I hate to mention works of art without attribution. I hope these terse notes will give an idea of the depth and variety of the contestants' sources. A common point is that these are texts that carry a lot of emotional weight, a lot of passion, and this allows the performer to express himself of herself very strongly -- again, contrasting with a "normal" reading.

Nathan: in Brian de Leeuw's novel "In This Way I Was Saved," a boy develops a complicated, controlling, and ultimately insane relationship with another boy, and several years later, in college, kills his friend rather than losing control over him.

Brendan: in Joe Meno's "The Boy Detective Fails," Billy tries to make sense of his sister's suicide, the one case he is not able to solve, but ends up in psychiatric care, unable to cope with the reality.

Kyle/Kile: a man literally gives up his right arm for his girlfriend -- a metaphor about commitment, sacrifice and resentment. Creepy but very effectively performed.

Amanda: in Laura van den Berg's story "Where We Must Be," Jane, a failed actress and mother of Jimmy who will soon die from a lethal disease, takes (and then loses) a job impersonating Bigfoot at a local amusement part, providing a comical counterpoint to a poignant story.

Colin: Richard McCann's essay "The Resurrectionist" explores the complicated feelings someone has toward the donor of the liver he received as a transplant.

Jeremy: after his mother dies, a man sorts the contents of her attic and finds nude photos of her that his father had (unsuccessfully) submitted to Playboy Magazine for their centerfold.

Most of the duo interpretation texts had something to do with exposing prejudices, racial or ethnic. This again gave the students an opportunity to do some great acting around the texts they had chosen. The audience often laughed... and then paused when the next sentences in the text made us realize that perhaps we had laughed at something that should have made us upset, or laughed because of a preconceived idea we had about people from a certain background.

Overall, this was eye-opening... and a good incentive to find out more such events in the future and attend them.