Terri Senft: Classes: Public Speaking: Assignments: Assignment 5

Assignment 5: Give an Entertainment Speech

This assignment helps you gauge your capacity for invention, improvisation, and knowledge of your audience. In our class "St. Thomas Cinderella," exercise, I showed you how to add local details to a universal story, in order to better reach your audience. Building on that exercise, you will now be asked to do the following:

1. Pick an "identity" from any listed below. If you have an idea for a different identity, you can use it, provided you clear it with Terri first. Notice that each of these identities also contains an audience and a mission. You will designing a speech with all these elements in mind.

2. Assuming this identity, create a two minute speech for the class. If the identity feels outrageous to you, you can be outrageous, but keep in mind that some of the funniest speeches come when the speaker's affect is deadly serious, but the material they are saying is absurd.

3. I will call you at random to give your speeches. At any time after the one minute mark, I will call out "switch"

4. I will then pick someone from the class to switch places with you, and assume your identity.

5. This person must improvise as your identity for thirty seconds.

6. Once thirty seconds is through, this person will give their speech as the identity they choose for themselves from the list below.

7. After thirty seconds, I will call out "switch," and swap a new person in for you.

8. We continue until everyone has given a one minute speech with their chosen identity, and has improvised for thirty seconds as someone else.

9. A note: The point of this exercise is FLOW, not perfection. The reason the subject matter here is goofy is because I want the room relaxed and laughing, not harsh and judgemental. If you are nervous about the improvisation part, know that nobody (except trained actors) improvs well, but everyone can stall for time when they have to--even you I'll show you some tricks in class for doing this, and you'll see how easy it can be.

Choose from one of these Identities

Your identity: An ugly stepsister
Your audience: Follow ugly stepsisters at a meeting of the International Ugly Stepsister Society
Your mission: Give three ways to stop pretty stepsisters like Cinderella from getting all the good men out there.

Your identity: A sales representative for Match.com (Internet dating service)
Your audience: Lonely princes who have still not found their Cinderella
Your mission: Explain how Match.com allows princes to save themselves the hassle of Palace balls and so forth, by hooking them up online with the woman of their dreams.

Your identity: Member of the Pumpkins-to-Carriages Company
Your audience: A meeting of the Fairy Godmothers convention
Your mission: Give two reasons why it would be mutually beneficial for the Godmothers to extend their magical time until 1:00 AM rather than midnight.

Your identity: A salesperson at Glass Slipper LowJack, Inc.
Your audience: Concerned princes who have lost their Cinderellas at the ball
Your mission: Give three reasons why princes should mandate that all women at their balls wear glass slippers with tracking devices installed.

Your identity: A spokesperson for Citizens for More Privacy in the Kingdom
Your audience: A town hall meeting with concerned citizens of the kingdom
Your mission: Explain the problem of princes who keep barging into citizens’ homes (ostensibly looking for women to fit into their glass slippers) and urge citizens to petition their kings to control their sons.

Your identity: A salesperson at Cingular Wireless
Your audience: A group of Fairy Godmothers at the Fairy Godmother Trade Show
Your mission: Give three reasons for why Fairy Godmothers should put their Cinderellas on a Cingular Family Calling Plan (e.g. to give advice in a hurry, to grant extensions past midnight on magic, etc.)

Your identity A teacher at the local college
Your audience: A group of pretty stepsisters (AKA Cinderellas)
Your mission: Give three reasons why pretty stepsisters should consider going to college instead of hoping their prince will find them one day.

Your identity: A hairdresser at Kingdom Hair and Nail Salon
Your audience: A group of Cinderellas at the Cinderella Trade Show
Your mission: To empathize with Cinderellas who have been given some ugly hairstyles by well-meaning Fairy Godmothers, and urge Cinderellas to stop by the salon the next time they need to really get ready for that special ball.Your identity: A Captain at Spoiled Princes Boot Camp

Your audience: An assembly of kings
Your mission: Explain how kings should start sending sons who waste the kingdom’s time and money searching for Cinderellas to Spoiled Princes Boot Camp. Detail three activities the Camp offers to get princes’ minds off women and back on work.

Your identity: A sales rep for Cinderella Bathroom Cleaning Products
Your audience: Cinderellas watching your infomercial on QVC
Your mission: Explain to Cinderellas that while they wait for their fairy Godmother to arrive, they are still stuck doing housework. Give three reasons why your products remain the best in the kingdom for girls who have yet to get rescued by a prince.

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