Speech Festival

Remember FTC, State Thespians or Districts? Well they have them in American Samoa too. Well kinda. I mean there are only 8 high schools on island so its not much of a competition. And remember those schools that had tacky sets, awful acting and ghetto costumes. Well they also have that on island too. Jokes Jokes.

In all seriousness, American Samoa goes all out for their Annual Speech Festival Competition. The festival is run by the English Departments on island, as there are no drama departments at any of the high schools. Kids love participating in Speech Festival in everything from onstage to backstage. I think we had over 100 kids representing Leone High School.

I will have to admit though that I did not have the privilege of attending the festival because I "volunteered" to stay back at school and watch the English classes for the rest of the department. You may ask why a person who graduated from college with a degree in Drama did not attend a "theatre festival." Well, it was a lot different than what I was used to. It seemed to be more of a Speech and Debate/Theatre Festival which I had difficulty wrapping my head around. I was asked to help out with our piece for Dramatic Interpretation of Drama. That means, 1 person acts out a scene involving 2 people. Now call me crazy, but when have you ever watched a TV show or Movie where 1 person pretends to be 2 different people in the same scene. You don't see Colin Firth playing his speech therapist played by Geoffry Rush and his original part at the same time. No you see two different actors. So yeah, I didn't get it.



Much could be said to explain my absence from this festival and it would just be an excuse, because now looking back, I completely regret it. But it was hard being new to a department who has been organizing speech festival for years and say, "hey, I have a degree in drama, let me run the play category." That just didn't fly. Therefore, I am grateful that I will be here next year to experience Speech Festival as a spectator so that I can fully appreciate the theatrical aspirations of our wonderful students.

To this years contestants at my school, I deeply apologize.



These pictures throughout the blog, are from our run-through the day before the competition. They are from the Play category, in which we did Jack and the Beanstalk, and from the Choral Recitation category, which I still don't really understand, but they LOVE IT here in Samoa.

PS. Do these pictures remember anyone of a lil ole production of INTO THE WOODS?!?