LV TMC is regarded the Toastmasters graduate school in District 67, featuring the highest percentage of DTMs and past district governors. LC TMC meets once a month at an awesome room equipped with state-of-the-art telecommunication facilities. Toastmasters Toshio Yada (矢田敏雄) and Yoshikazu Kawakami (河上悅和) from Bashamichi Advanced TMC, District 76, were on-line to join the first Video-TMC meeting via skpe this evening.During the first half of the meeting, District 67 LGM Caroline Kiang was the sole prepared speaker. She gave a dramatic talk using the Advanced Manual--The Entertaining Speaker. She used 6 minutes and 58 seconds to deliver a dramatic story about a couple separated across the Taiwan Strait since 1949.
She opened her speech with a young female protagonist Jennifer singing "Nightlife in Shanghai 夜上海" gleefully, who just came back from a romantic trip in Shanghai. Then Jennifer told a story about her grandfather Steven, a solider came to Taiwan in 1949, leaving his pregnant fiancee behind with his best friend Robert. After his early retirement, he ran a noodles shop in Manga (萬華), working hard day and night to support his family. After work, Steven drank Kinmen kaoliang and sang "Arrest Susan 蘇三起解" to curb his nostalgic emotions. Upon Steven's request, Jennifer visited Shanghai with a green pouch (an exchange token of love) in hand, she ran into the grandson of her grandfather's sweetheart on the street. Jennifer's serendipitous encounter with her half-brother connected Steven and his sweetheart after 60+ years. When Steven told his sweetheart, "I always have you in my heart", his sweetheart replied, "your love is my final destination".
Caroline delivered her speech with excellent vocal variety by singing a popular Mandarin song and a famous Peking opera. She used the green pouch to enrich her body language and facial expressions. The contents and structure of her story were witty and full of twist. My suggestions for her dramatic talk would be to change her speech title from "Shanghai, Taiwan" to "Shanghai, Taipei". In her story, she had prelude, five scenes, and epilogue. She could take advantage of extra 30 seconds to add more dramatic dialogues to balance with the narration to achieve the best entertaining effect.
On early Tuesday morning, July 2nd, the Taiwanese Theater Tycoon Hugh Lee passed away at age of 58. He left with us three elements in drama and life. They are humor, imagination, and love. Caroline Kiang's prepared speech was of humor, imagination, and love. It was a blissful and demanding task being her evaluator. Being an amateur actor, I enjoyed her dramatic talk, so did the audience, I believe.
Many congratulations to Mike Yang for shouldering the challenging responsibilities of the most Avant-garde TMC in District 67. And thanks to him for being my evaluator of Speech Evaluator, Project 1, CL Manual. Also thanks to Caroline Kiang for inviting me to be her evaluator and prompting me to remove the dust on novels of O. Henry on my bookshelf.
No comments:
Post a Comment