So recently, I started devling into a new speech area known as Dramatic and Humorous Interpretation. This category allows a student to choose a written script (book, magazine, cartoon, movie etc) and perform it with their own thought of analysis and interpretation.
So, I chose a childrens picture book story and morphed into a humorous interpretation speech. I performed this speech at a tournament at Yale and came 2nd (out of about 60 competitors). Needless to say, I enjoy this kind of speech category, childrens novels are so simple yet so interesting.
Here is the downside, like any other activity, speech interpretaion takes immense amount of time. I meet with my speech coach 3 times a week, and tournaments last the entire day on a saturday, it is very tiresome. However, because I enjoy it, I don’t find the time a huge problem. The problem I do have is whether its something to write on my applications to colleges.
Focusing on the Tier 1 (ivies etc) and Tier 2 (NYU, John Hopkins etc) colleges, would members on the admission commitee for these colleges take my choice of childrens literature somewhat bland and too easy, like a ‘low hanging fruit’? Would they believe that since I am working with childrens books for my speech work that I am immature and not serious?
I would hope very much that that would not be the case, but I would love to hear some responses to this.