Fanatical Resources!

Current Category: 1st Steps: Preparing a Selection
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Abridging (AKA: Cutting) Literature From The Northern California Forensics Association - 3 Major Steps
Cutting a Prose Selection Includes tips for how to cut for black binder page turns! Essential to any type of storytelling, finding the one story to tell is crucial. Because Forensics has time limits, being concise with a cutting is necessary for telling a coherent story. Ten minutes, or eight in some areas, is not much time. Straying into unneeded subplots, introducing characters that add nothing, or any other waste of precious time cannot happen. Even if the source material has a few stories intertwined, competitors need to determine if ONE tale can be taken and cut to fit time. (A subplot can be cut into the piece as long as it directly relates to the main story and does not take too much time.) If this can be accomplished, then a piece can be cut.
Cutting Material for Speech Competitions Tips from one of our 4N6 Fanatics Coaches! Lindsey Petropoulos, Rice Middle School, TX -- Ready to coach your students in the art of “cutting” performance pieces? Lindsey Petropoulous has over ten years’ experience as a speech, theatre and debate teacher and coach and provides some tips to help your students get started.
Cutting Scripts by Juan De La Cruz of 3P Speech Everyone develops their own unique cutting approach that may vary based on event or type of literature to be cut. In this article Juan De La Cruz provides some insight into his own personal style for cutting selections.
Developing Strong Interp Introductions Introductions for any event follow the same principle: set the tone while providing any necessary background information and include the selection's title and author. It sounds easy, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s not important! While a relatively small aspect of your performance, the intro has the potential to move your performance from a lower rank to the top performance of a round or tournament. Writing strong introductions will make you and your selection memorable and relevant.
Editing Literature for Oral Interpretation - VIDEO by Eric Mischne, Asst Professor of Communication at Cedarville University, Ohio
Finding and Selecting Material From the Ad Astra Debate League, Kansas’ number one resource for competitive speech and debate programs. Pam McComas (Retired NSDA Board member and coach - Topeka HS;) and Russ Tidwell (Coach - Garden City HS) combine their talents as two of the all-time Kansas speech and interpretation legends as they discuss how they search for and select literature for their State and National Champions. Guest commentary from Missouri's legendary Don Crabtree
Keeping it Fresh! From our Friends at 4N6U.org - Sometimes, as the year extends pieces and speeches begin to feel a little stale. Keeping them exciting to the judges is sometimes about keeping them exciting to the students. These exercises are designed to limit that mid year slump. They can be applied to most public address and interp events.
Memorization - Learning Lines by Bruce Miller Regardless of what techniques ultimately work for you, never forget that what the playwright has written into the script is there for a reason. Each word, each phrase, and every piece of punctuation was put there by the playwright after careful deliberation and with painstaking care. You owe it to the playwright and to yourself as an artist to respect his choices and his craft. It is very unlikely that your accidental changes will improve upon what is already there. Learn your lines and deliver them the way they were written.
Memorization APP - The Actor's Lines ($3.49) Learning lines or memorizing lines is a lot quicker with this line runner app designed by actors. Your friends and family will be happy you can memorize lines quickly on your own. Once your off book with fully memorized and learned lines, you can then speed up the pace to really test how fast you can rehearse (run those Italians). We help memorize lines for rehearsals, auditions, film scripts, plays, classes, workshops, all your acting needs or even business pitches.
Memorization Techniques Shakespeare actually used this memory training technique in the Globe theatre to teach his actors how to memorize lines. It is a simple yet extremely effective technique to memorize lines. - A 5-Minute Video
Memorization Tool - Script Rehearser Script Rehearser is a free rehearsing app for Android. Hit the ground running. Save yourself hours of time and turn up knowing your lines. Whether it’s a stage script, screenplay, speech or presentation, you can rehearse and memorize on the go in an effective and convenient way. Completely free, with no ads, no paid upgrades and no random payments - we just love to support actors.
Memorizing a Speech - 10x Faster A 5-minute video to help students with memorization
Memorizing Lines - Tips for Student Actors Getting your lines “close enough” and then making up the rest is not really an option. Fortunately, there are many methods of memorization. Here are some tips Kevin Stone for Pioneer Drama Service
Memorizing: 13 APPS every Actor Should Use In our increasingly digital world, most of us are rarely very far from a phone or tablet. Why not use this technology to learn lines, stay organized, and book more auditions? Here are 13 apps for actors that will help you do just that!
The Basics of Oral Interpretation From The Northern California Forensics Association (NCFA) Prepared by Kirt Shineman & Nathan Steele (NOTE – Some information may differ slightly from your state – Please review before sharing with students)
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