Themes of love and loss where explored in a fundraiser held by the Moorpark College forensics team at the Performing Arts Center Dec. 2.
The national award-winning forensics team at Moorpark College held a fundraiser at the Performing Arts Center last Wednesday night.
The team showed off their skills while raising money to pay for this year’s tournament expenses. The speakers performed stories and situations of love, loss, cruelty, and even the dangers of free speech.
The team is led by coaches Rolland Petrello, Neal Stewart, Jill McCall, August Benassi, and Jim Wyman. For coach Petrello, his favorite part of working with these students is watching them learn.
“[The best part is] watching students grow from being nervous about speaking to winning State and National Championships in as little as a few months,” said Petrello “The skills and confidence they get from that is something that many of our alums have said has completely transformed their lives, regardless of the career path they pursued.”
The night started off with an oral interpretation speech by team newcomer Stacy Treible. Oral Interpretation is a collage of literature centered around a central point, in Treible’s case, the things you miss out on if you are too busy.
Treible was followed by silver medalist Emma Buel, with a persuasion speech on human trafficking. Although persuasion is well known in the Speech 101 classes, competition persuasion can be a little different, sometimes lasting up to 10 minutes. Buel was excellent, stating her points clearly and intensely. She easily paced the stage while informing students about the truth of modern slavery. One fact she included; when offering donations to stop human trafficking, be aware not to fund organizations that unintentionally feed the problem.
“If you buy all 30,000 child slaves in Haiti,” Buel said. “There will be 60,000 next year.”
She suggested that anyone interested in helping look to www.endexploitation.org, a company that helps get freed former slaves back on their feet.
Megan Rayzor, a gold medalist in Reader’s Theatre speech and a recent bronze medalist in Prose Interpretation, followed Buel with an excerpt from “Flags Waving” by Carolyn Steele Agosta.
“Flags Waving” tells the story of a girl’s disappointment when her long estranged dad fails to show up for her color guard performance, again. Rayzor was full of energy and emotion as she marched across the stage. Despite the disheartening storyline, you couldn’t help but hope along with her.
The stand out performance of the night was multi-gold medalist Joe Laughon performing impromptu speaking.
In this type of speech, the speaker is given a quote as a prompt, and must then form a speech around it. Neal Stewart, a coach of the team described it as “like a magic trick when done well.”
Indeed, it did seem like a magic trick. After being given the quote “what we do in life echoes eternity” by a random audience member, Laughon had just over a minute to prepare. The resulting 8 1/2 minute speech connected the popular quote to Joseph Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, some aides of Civil War general Robert E. Lee and even the man who could have shot Hitler.
The last three speeches were fairly diverse in nature. Amy Fram performed a dramatic interpretation from the play “Amanda.” “Amanda” follows the life of a single mother whose child, Clay, has cerebral palsy. This dramatic performance was followed by a more cheerful, comedic speech by Tara Malenfant, who warned the audience that free speech is taking over.
The night was closed by Ebony Taylor, a gold medal, national champion of the team, performing a prose interpretation of “The Watcher.” Taylor had a striking presence; every word was concise and appropriately spiteful until the end.
