Public Speaking

by Clarence Stratton

Then there should be a departure from this system. Educational development comes not only from doing what you are best able to do, but from developing the less-marked phases of your disposition and character. The opposite practice should be followed, at least once. Let the prominent class member assume a rôle of subdued personality. Let the timid take the lead. Induce the silent to deliver the majority of the speeches. You will be amazed frequently to behold the best delineations springing from such assignments.

Such rehearsing of a play already studied should terminate the minute analysis in order to show the material for what it is—actable drama. It will vivify the play again, and make the characters live in your memory as mere reading never will. You will see the moving people, the grouped situations, the developed story, the impressive climax, and the satisfying conclusion.

In dealing with scenes from a long play—whether linked or disconnected—pupils will always have a feeling of incompleteness. In a full-length play no situation is complete in itself. It is part of a longer series of events. It may finish one part of the action, but it usually merely carries forward the plot, passing on the complication to subsequent situations.

Short Plays. To deal with finished products should be the next endeavor. There are thousands of short plays suitable for class presentation in an informal manner. Most of them do not require intensive study, as does a great Greek or English drama, so their preparation may go on entirely outside the classroom. It should be frankly admitted that the exercises of delivering lines "in character" as here described is not acting or producing the play. That will come later. These preliminary exercises—many or few, painstaking or sketchy—are processes of training pupils to speak clearly, interestingly, forcefully, in the imagined character of some other person. The pupil must not wrongly believe that he is acting.

Though the delivery of a complete short play may seem like a performance, both participants and audience must not think of it so. It is class exercise, subject to criticism, comment, improvement, exactly as all other class recitations are.

Since the entire class has not had the chance to become familiar with all the short plays to be presented, some one should give an introductory account of the time and place of action. There might be added any necessary comments upon the characters. The cast of characters should be written upon the board.

This exercise should be exactly like the preceding, except that it adds the elements of developing the plot of the play, creating suspense, impressing the climax, and satisfactorily rounding off the play. In order to accomplish these important effects the participants will soon discover that they must agree upon certain details to be made most significant. This will lead to discussions about how to make these points stand out. In the concerted attempt to give proper emphasis to some line late in the play it will be found necessary to suppress a possible emphasis of some line early in the action. To reinforce a trait of some person, another character may have to be made more self-assertive.

To secure this unified effect which every play should make the persons involved will have to consider carefully every detail in lines and stage directions, fully agree upon what impression they must strive for, then heartily coöperate in attaining it. They must forget themselves to remember always that "the play's the thing."

The following list will suggest short plays suitable for informal classroom training in dramatics. Most of these are also general enough in their appeal to serve for regular production upon a stage before a miscellaneous audience.