Alicia kim's blog

The small movements I made, my Minion-like face and height, and the tone of my voice. Everything was judged by my senior partner.

Out of the three tournaments I’ve competed in this year, in two of them, I performed duo acting with different partners. In the first one, I collaborated with my fellow sophomore classmate who was also in speech, in performing Proof by David Auburn. It was a dramatic piece that handled mainly two characters and their emotional relationship: a depressive Catherine who lost her father and Hal who tries to help her get closure.

Since it was both of our first time in speech, we weren’t able to recite impressively, failing to go to the finals. However, I was able to learn more about acting. Since it was also my first time being involved in acting, I was able to notice observations that I’ve made from the other groups that helped me carefully plan the next speech competition.

When that tournament had arrived, I was prepared. I was partners with a senior who has been doing impromptu for the most part. In the beginning, we decided to do FRIENDS in the category of comedy. However, in the last week, we changed it to Minions, since we thought FRIENDS’ comedy was hard to understand. With that, we chose the very first scene of how the Minions evolved in the movie.

This time, we were able to break to the finals. In the finals, we changed few of the elements that were in our script to make the overall outcome more appealing. Within the nerve-wrecking moment where we were quietly listening to what the judge will say. Then, she called both of our name. We were the 5th place out of 12. Something felt a little bittersweet. Despite having to start a new piece three days before the competition, it was a great result, but I still felt we could have done better.

On my last tournament, I decided to finally participate in oratory. I competed with the topic of being indecisive. Because it was my first time competing in this category, I decide to set my goal as improving every time I go to different rounds. In the three rounds, I could tell that I was getting better at the speech. I wasn’t really proud of myself, but I was glad that I was able to try this new speech and was able to reflect on it and grow, so that I would be able to come back as an orator next year.