Was my speech Wicked?! (Informative Speech Reflection)

After listening the first speech on the cruel treatment of dolphins,  I was nervous. I thought I could have possibly implemented slides as a way of effectively communicating my message not only verbally, but visually as well. However, I had rehearsed my speech to my twin sisters so many times that Elphaba practically became a third sister to me: this was my strength. From my experience in the theater, I knew how important rehearsals were for any form of public speaking. If you don’t rehearse you have no idea the possible problems that could arise within whatever you are speaking about.  So to conjure (muhahaha… Wicked… get it?) a remedy to this situation, I rehearsed my butt off.

The use of music, in the opening of my speech, was a big benefactor to my success. It was able to get the audience into the correct mindset of thinking about tones, and mood shifts that are commonly associated with theatrical performance. In addition, it demonstrated the antithesis between the two plays musically. One being a rock opera and the other being a traditional theatrical soundtrack. However, it might have gone on for a little too long. In between people shouting out tone words there were a few awkward pauses, due to the redundancy of the music.  

After, I gave my introduction on what I was going to do. I did a good job, however, I forgot to make verbal roadsigns for the audience to follow throughout the speech. From this speech, I learned that not only do I need to include them, but I need to make sure to reiterate my points. After seeing a few of my fellow classmates speeches I realized that this the was key to actually retaining the knowledge from a speech. I gave people few signs of what information we had passed, and my speech would have been much more effective if I had included said verbal roadsigns.

Finally, my stance might have been an issue. After performing my speech, I realized I completely forgot about my body control. I was jumping up, down and all around the place. In hindsight there was quite a lot of  pacing around. Mind you, for a speech on musical theater, this could be considered appropriate behavior; however, if my topic was on any other subject this would most likely have been disastrous and wildly inappropriate. This unbridled body movement implied a lack of confidence in the topic I had chosen. Safe to say, my iTunes library and I know that this lack of confidence in musical theater does not exist.