Districts Speech

Speech is an activity that is available to high school students. The speech team for each high school has many different teams of which perform at Districts for their high school. Speech can be both a team speech activity or individual speech. Team speech is more popular, but individual speech is also present. Districts for team speech were on Saturday, January 23^rd. For the school of Cedar Rapids’ John F. Kennedy High School, their districts for team speech was then at Monticello. Kennedy did amazing there, with twenty three of their twenty four team speech teams making it onto state speech, which will be hosted at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids on February 6^th. Here is a run through of the various team speech types.

One type of team speech is group improvisation. Group improvisation is a team that consists of three people, and there are three different topics presented to the team. They have about a minute to prepare, and then it is around three to five minutes I believe of which they have to present an act on one of the three topics.

Another types of team speech is choral reading. Choral reading is a fifteen minute piece which can include props, costumes, and musical props and instruments. There are a few rules with choral reading, one of which requiring scripts to be in the hands of every member for a majority of the performance. This year Kennedy High School did a piece over the homeless called Invisible, written by the Speech Director at Kennedy, Mrs. Osborn.

A few other types of team speech are also Ensemble Acting, TV News, Radio Broadcasting, and Short Film.

One Act is another type of team speech that is a performance of a big play in one act instead, with thirty minutes to perform. This year Kennedy performed Of Mice and Men for their One Act. It is all memorized, with costumes, props, and a set.

Musical Theatre is yet another type of team speech. It is around ten minutes long I believe, and it is what you would expect, an excerpt of a musical, thus the name musical theatre.

Another type of team speech is Mime. Mime can be by yourself or with other people, and both are considered team speech. In it you have a few minutes to do a performance of something without being able to talk at all; it all gets across by facials and actions only.

One last type of team speech is Readers Theatre. Readers Theatre is a twenty five minute piece that requires the use of a script. The only props available are boxes to use as chairs, or possibly chairs themselves. Readers Theatre is usually an emotional piece from Kennedy, and this year it has to do with Alzheimer’s.

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