Understanding & Analyzing the
Selection
Chapter 2
Selecting your Text
Where to Look…
 Libraries
 Audio Resources
 Technology
 Newspapers
 College Libraries
 Internet
 College Bookstores
 Testimony
 Used Books
 Can you think of others?
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Selecting Literature
 Consider Yourself
 Consider Your Capabilities
 Consider Your Audience
 Consider Literary Value
 Consider Appropriateness
Understanding the Text
 Speaker
 Scene
 Audience
 Act
 Agency
 Purpose
Introductions should…
 …prepare the audience
 …allow the audience to meet you
 …provide essential information
 …establish a mood
Introductions should focus on…
 …how you relate to the selection
 …the category’s requirements
 …social issues
 …the writer’s purpose
 …an element of the selection
Introductions should avoid…
 …running out of time
 …spoiling the experience by giving away too much
 …asking trite rhetorical questions
 …copying someone else’s introductions
 …either reading or performing your introduction
Analyzing your text
 Denotative meaning
 Explicit meaning
 Connotative meaning
 Suggestions, overtones
 Persona
 The narrator
 Locus
 Physical & psychological state
Structural Components, cont’d
 Climax
 Logical content
 Repetition
 Rhyme
 Emotional content
Aesthetic Components
 Unity
 What holds the piece together
 Ex. Persona, Locus
 Connectives: and, then, later…
 Harmony
 Sentence structure
 layout
Aesthetic Components, Cont’d
 Variety
 Associations are similar, but different (ex. Twins)
 Contrast
 Associations are opposite/different (Ex. “the Quiet noise”
Aesthetic Components, Cont’d
 Balance & proportions
 Rhythm
 Stressed & Unstressed syllables
 Rhythm Content
Technical Challenges
 Preparing script
 Using Excerpts
 Placing action
 Introduction
 Author of selection
 Prepare audience for events
 Establishes persona
 Adopting author’s language
Cutting Literature for Performance
 Read the ENTIRE selection
 Thoroughly analyze the work as a whole
 Continuity is critical!
 Beginning, Middle, End
 Stay true to author’s intent
 Avoid cutting vivid passages
 Cut repetition (in prose)
 Cut tag lines
 Cut subplots
 Cut references to something you’ve already cut
Rehearsal Techniques
 Establish regular schedule
 110%
 Seek audiences
 Mark your manuscript
 Videotape
 Audiotape
 Work with other interpreters