Oral Interpretation Guidelines

1
Oral Interpretation Guidelines

• The following information was borrowed from the
  2001-2002 UIL Prose and Poetry
  Interpretation Handbook

2
Introduction

• The function of oral interpretation is not only
  to discover, but then to share, and what joy
  comes from sharing literature with an audience!
  Those moments create a special bond between the
  literature, the reader and the listener.
• Jana Riggins, UIL Speech Director

3
General Guidelines

• Getting Started
• Preparing for the Contest
• UIL Categories
• Resources

4
Getting Started

• Finding Literature
• Where to Look
• Selecting Literature
• Understanding the Text

• Introductions
• Transitions
• Cutting
• Rehearsal
• Performance

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Where to Look

• Libraries
• Technology
• College Libraries
• College Bookstores
• Used Books

• Audio Resources
• Newspapers
• Internet
• Testimony
• Can you think of others?

www.wetmoredeclamation.com
6
Selecting Literature

• Consider Yourself
• Consider Your Capabilities
• Consider Your Audience
• Consider Literary Value
• Consider Appropriateness

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Understanding the Text

• Speaker
• Scene
• Audience
• Act
• Agency
• Purpose

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Introductions should

• prepare the audience
• allow the audience to meet you
• provide essential information
• establish a mood

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Introductions should focus on

• how you relate to the selection
• the categorys requirements
• social issues
• the writers purpose
• an element of the selection

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Introductions should avoid

• running out of time
• spoiling the experience by giving away too much
• asking trite rhetorical questions
• copying someone elses introductions
• either reading or performing your introduction

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Cutting Literature for Performance

• Read the ENTIRE selection
• Thoroughly analyze the work as a whole
• Continuity is critical!
• Beginning, Middle, End
• Stay true to authors intent
• Avoid cutting vivid passages
• Cut repetition (in prose)
• Cut tag lines
• Cut subplots
• Cut references to something youve already cut

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Rehearsal Techniques

• Establish regular schedule
• 110
• Seek audiences
• Mark your manuscript
• Videotape
• Audiotape
• Work with other interpreters

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Rehearsal Techniques (cont.)

• Focus!
• Practice in noisy surroundings
• Use a variety of volumes
• Isolate portions of script for practice
• Ask people to listen ONLY to intro
• Prepare more than one intro.

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Preparing for the Contest

• Plan in Advance
• What to Expect
• Tournament Guidelines
• Ethics and Sportsmanship

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Plan in Advance for Competition

• School work comes first
• Know the rules
• Make sure you have met paperwork requirements
• Provide parents with schedule info
• Dress appropriately. . .

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Dressing Appropriately

• Sneakers are not appropriate
• Dress conservatively
• Dress neat, clean, unwrinkled
• Avoid clothing that draws attention to itself
• Men slacks, ties, jackets
• Women dress or suit

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Tournament Guidelines Contest Site
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Tournament Guidelines Contest Room
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Tournament Guidelines Awards Assembly
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Ethics and Sportsmanship
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UIL Categories

• Prose Category A B
• Poetry Category A B
• Documentation

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Prose

• In the 60s and 70s, the UIL prose categories
  featured geographical distinctions, and
  selections were restricted to those written by
  authors included on an official UIL list. In the
  80s, the categories featured genre distinctions 
  novels, essays, short stories, nonfiction, and
  folklore.

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Prose (cont.)

• Because these distinctions are often so very
  difficult to draw, the prose and poetry committee
  sought to create prose categories that did not
  rely on questionable parameters for what fit and
  did not fit a category. The current prose
  categories require documentation only in Category
  A.

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Prose Categories

• Category A Celebrate Non-Fiction First Person
  Narratives
• Category B Celebrate Fiction

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Prose Category A

• The contestant shall perform a selection from a
  published work of non-fiction written in prose,
  from the first-person point of view. The goal of
  this category is to encourage students to explore
  narratives of human experience as reported by the
  author.

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Prose Category A (cont.)

• Material for this category should be drawn from
  one of the following published forms memoirs,
  autobiographies, letters, diaries, journals, or
  essays. In this type of literary work, the
  author tells a story as he or she experienced it.
  The point of view will be personal, making use
  of the pronouns I, me, my, mine, and
  we. The selection shall not be drawn from
  published or unpublished speeches, one-person
  theatre, or theatrical monologues. Works by
  anonymous authors are not permissible.

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• For Category A, the contestant shall provide
  published documentation verifying that the
  selection is classified as non-fiction.
  Verification shall consist of Library of Congress
  or Dewey Decimal Classification system, or other
  published source such as The New York Times
  bestseller list, that establishes the selection
  as a piece of non-fiction.

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• Contest Director must ask for and verify written
  documentation prior to the beginning of the
  round. Students shall not be allowed to compete
  without sufficient documentation. If an on-line
  data service is used for documentation,
  contestants should print the home page/main index
  page of the site from which the documentation was
  retrieved. Printouts of the documentation and the
  home page should include the URL of the web site.
  Bibliographic Information

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Prose Category B

• The contestant shall perform a selection from a
  published work of fiction written in prose. The
  selection should be drawn from a novel, novella,
  novelette or short story. The goal of this
  category is to encourage contestants to explore
  the imagination of authors from any country
  throughout the world. The author of this category
  may not be used in the other prose category.
  Works by an anonymous author are not permissible.

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• For Category B, the contestant shall provide
  published documentation verifying that the
  selection is classified as fiction. Verification
  shall consist of Library of Congress or Dewey
  Decimal Classification system, or other published
  source such as The New York Times bestseller
  list, that establishes the selection as a piece
  of fiction

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Suggestion

• Students are urged to take to the contest site
  the original published source of the selection
  and/or to add bibliographic information for
  selections in the form of a footnote on their
  manuscript copy.

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Poetry

• Category Restrictions
• Material chosen for use in either category of
  poetry interpretation shall meet the following
  restrictions

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Poetry (cont.)

1. all selections shall be published, printed
   material,
2. selections from plays or screenplays shall not be
   used,
3. song lyrics published only as music shall not be
   used,
4. no contestant shall use an individual poet in
   more than one category in the contest,

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Cont.

• no contestant shall use selections from the same
  literary work more than one year at UIL State
  Meet,
• selections shall be read in the English
  translation however, incidental use of foreign
  language words and phrases in any selection may
  be used as in the original.

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Poetry Categories

• Category A "Celebrate the Poem"
• Category B "Celebrate the Poet"

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Poetry Category A

• The contestant shall perform either one published
  poem, or an excerpt from only one published poem.
  The goal of this category is to challenge the
  contestant to explore a single poetry selection
  and to communicate its literary style and quality
  through performance. The poet used in this
  category may not be used in the other poetry
  category. Works by an anonymous poet are not
  permissible.

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• The contestant must provide biographic
  information showing that the birthplace,
  nationality, or naturalized citizenship of the
  poet is from outside the Americas. No poets from
  the countries of North America, Central America,
  and South America and their territories within
  the Western Hemisphere are allowed.

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Poetry Category B

• The contestant shall select one poet and perform
  two or more published poems, or two or more
  portions of poems, by that author. The goal of
  this category is to encourage students to examine
  the body of an author's poetic works. In the
  choice of poems for performance, the student
  should feature some aspect of the poet's work,
  including but not limited to the following

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Poetry Category B (cont.)

• its development over time, thematic or technical
  elements, use of imagery, or reflection of the
  poet's life. The introduction and/or transitions
  should demonstrate the performer's understanding
  of the poet's work, as well as seek to enhance
  the audience's awareness of the poet's work. The
  poet used in this category may not be used in the
  other poetry category.

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• Although this category does not require
  documentation, the selections must be (a)
  published works, (b) written by an identified
  poet (anonymous authors are not permissible), (c)
  written by a poet other than the one who wrote
  the selection used for Category A.

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Documentation Requirements

• Although Category A and B do not require
  documentation, contest material must meet
  category restrictions.

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Bibliographic Information

• Students are urged to take to the contest site
  the original published source of the selection
  and/or to add bibliographic information for
  selections in the form of a footnote on their
  manuscript copy.

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Documentation Types

• Reference Book
• Published Newspaper
• Biographical Passage
• Magazine Article
• Book Jacket

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• If an on-line data service is used for
  documentation, the source of the published
  material should be included. Other acceptable
  sources of documentation include
• Letterhead stationery from the publishing company
  or the author verifying the author's place of
  birth or
• Email from the publisher or author verifying the
  author's place of birth.

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Taken from The Leaguer

• At the heart of this poetry category is the issue
  of cultural diversity. Looking at some of the key
  words in the description of the category found in
  the Constitution and Contest Rules will give
  focus to your program and probably add depth to
  your first impressions of the category. Culture
  can be defined as a body of customary beliefs,
  social forms and material traits of a racial,
  religious or social group.

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• Diversity deals with differences, and the
  differences included in the CCR description
  paragraph draw the boundaries for this fairly
  open category economic, social and political.
  Your program can explore financial issues, (i.e.,
  the Great Depression), social issues (i.e., the
  AIDS crisis), or political issues (i.e., the
  Vietnam War) and be within the realm of its
  intent. In fact, a good brainstorming session
  with your teammates or coach can reveal many
  themes upon which you can build your program of
  material.

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• The key issue is What type of diversity does
  your theme express? Are you examining the
  socially different, such as the homeless or the
  handicapped? Are you exploring the effects of
  cultural ethnicity? Is the diversity of religions
  at the heart of your program? Are you reading
  poetry from the war-torn country of Bosnia or
  economically depraved Russia? Have you, perhaps,
  built a program of poems from the American
  working-class perspective?

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• Your concern might be Will the judge perceive
  what diversity I am exploring? The answer can lie
  in your introduction and transitions that you
  build within the program. These will be critical
  to ensuring that judges and audiences understand
  the diversity issues you are examining within
  your program. Just as debaters must keep the
  "spirit of the resolution clear in their approach
  to the resolution, so interpreters must keep the
  "spirit" of this performance category clear.

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• Keep in the forefront the original intent of this
  category, which is to explore the differences in
  mankind, building an understanding of your
  differences, while exploring great literature.
  Remember that interpreters must not assume that
  their critics and audience will automatically
  comprehend the diversity. It will be 
  advantageous to the performer to use the
  introduction and transitions to forward the
  diversity being explored through the poetry
  selected for the program.

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Resources

• Internet
• Printed
• Rules and Ranking

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Evaluation Criteria Prose

• Judges evaluate each performer individually based
  on the total presentation. At the end of the
  round, performers are ranked in order of the
  quality of the presentations Best is first,
  second best is second, and so on. All contestants
  are ranked. There can be no ties.

52
Evaluation of Introduction

• Did the performer prepare you to listen to the
  selection?
• Did the content, form, and delivery style of the
  introduction add to the over-all effectiveness of
  the performance?

53
Evaluation of Selection/Performance

• Did the performer recreate the narrator - the
  person talking in the prose - and the characters?
  (age, gender race,, educational level, social
  status, psychological and dispositional traits,
  etc.)
• Did the performance reflect the scene - when and
  where the prose takes place and appropriately
  indicate any changes in location or time? (in a
  living room, supermarket, automobile, classroom,
  etc morning, evening, winter, summer, etc.)

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• Did the performer reveal the narrator's purpose
  in the selection - why is the narrator talking?
  (to convince, to persuade, to understand, to
  remember, to console, to tease, to explain, etc.)
  
• Did the performer demonstrate an awareness of the
  audience - to whom are the narrator and
  characters talking? (to him/herself? to another
  person? to a group of people?)

55

• Did the performer make appropriate use of
  physical skills in the performance? (movement,
  gestures, expressions, stance, posture, eye
  contact, etc. were motivated by the text and
  purposeful to the performance?)
• Did the performer make appropriate use of vocal
  skills in the performance? (dialect, dialogue,
  volume, rate, pitch, etc. were believable?)

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• Was the performer in control of the literature?
  (was the material appropriate for the performer?)
  
• Was the performer in control of the performance
  situation? (use of manuscript, internal pacing
  and pauses, sense of closure were appropriate?)

57
Evaluation Criteria Poetry

• Judges evaluate each performer individually based
  on the total presentation. At the end of the
  round, performers are ranked in order of the
  quality of the presentations Best is first,
  second best is second, and so on. All contestants
  are ranked. There can be no ties.

58
Evaluation of Introduction

• Did the performer prepare you to listen to the
  selection?
• Did the content, form, and delivery style of the
  introduction add to the over-all effectiveness of
  the performance?

59
Evaluation of Selection/Performance

• Did the performer recreate the persona - the
  person talking in the poem? (age, gender, race,
  educational level, social status, psychological
  and dispositional traits, etc.)
• Did the performance reflect the scene - when and
  where the poem takes place and appropriately
  indicate any changes in location or time? (in a
  living room, supermarket, automobile, classroom,
  etc morning, evening, winter, summer, etc.)

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• Did the performer reveal the persona's purpose in
  saying the poem - why is the persona talking? (to
  convince, to persuade, to understand, to
  remember, to console, to tease, to explain, etc.)
  
• Did the performer demonstrate an awareness of the
  audience - to whom is the person in the poem
  talking? (to him/herself? to another person? to a
  group of people?)

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• Did the performer make appropriate use of
  physical skills in the performance? (movement,
  gestures, expressions, stance, posture, eye
  contact, etc. were motivated by the text and
  purposeful to the performance?)
• Did the performer make appropriate use of vocal
  skills in the performance? (dialect, dialogue,
  volume, rate, pitch, etc. were believable?)

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• Was the performer in control of the literature?
  (was the material appropriate for the performer?)
  
• Was the performer in control of the performance
  situation? (use of manuscript, internal pacing
  and pauses, sense of closure were appropriate?)

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In conclusion

• For more information, visit the UIL website at
  http//www.utexas.edu/admin/uil/index. html
• Or ask me to see the UIL Prose and Poetry Handbook