By Niya Miller
These past few months, our Saber Large Group Speech team has been working on some pretty cool projects. This season, 11 groups have been memorizing, recording, practicing, filming, and singing their way towards nearly straight 1s at Districts on January 25th.
Groups this year include 3 ensemble acting groups, 2 short film groups, 2 radio broadcasting groups, 2 musical theater groups, 1 group mime, and an improv group. The team is coached by Brianne Magill and Wendy McCartt. Groups meet with their coaches at least once a week and practice their material.
Districts were held at Comanche High School on January 25th. Each group was given a center and performance time to go and show what they’d been working on to a judge. From there, the judge would make comments and give the group either a Division I or Division II rating based on their performance. Any groups that got a Division I got to move on to State, held on February 8th in Cedar Rapids. Every speech member gets to move on to State, and all but one group gets to perform there.
At state, the groups all performed again, but this time for 3 judges. Scores can range from straight 1s (all judges gave the group a 1), Overall 1s (2 judges gave 1s, 1 gave a 2), Overall 2s (2 judges gave 2s, 1 judge gave a 1), and straight 2s (all judges gave the performance a 2). No groups from Dewitt got straight 2s, and only one got overall 2s at state.
Any group that got 1s at state could be nominated for All-State. Our only group moving on to All-State on February 22nd in Ames, is “Two-Hundred Forty-Seven” by Julia and Hailey Fielding (Right).
One of the most exciting events to watch is group improv. This year’s group consisted of Senior Jenny Claussen, Junior Suzie Cox, and Freshman Ella Taylor. Group improv performances have the group draw a few different scenarios, decide which one to do, vaguely script it out, and then set up chairs as their props. From there, the group improvises a performance based on the scenario they drew. For example, at Districts the group drew a prompt about a town meeting in the 1800s to discuss a new law. Each person had a role: one was a mayor, one was a townsperson, and one was new to the town. From there, they acted everything out.
“We would talk about how we need a clear opening, a clear ending line, we need to slowly build to a climax, and kind of just be like ‘yes, and-’, and not get in a question trap. It’s a harder event for sure, so we had to know who our decision maker was, which was me, Ella is pretty go-with-the-flow, and Suzie is just silly, so she made it funny. We get 2 minutes to pick our ending line, opening line, and set a scene,” group member Jenny Claussen said.
Speech event topics span a wide range of ideas. One such example of this is Julia and Hailey Fielding's “‘Two Hundred Forty-seven’, a short film about running. Starring Julia Fielding, a senior, the film shows how much work goes into one race. The runner false starts, and then goes on to show us how she prepares for the next season and learns from her mistake.
“You can do anything you want with it and be super creative. This year, my short film was about track and the process behind it.” Hailey, a sophomore, says. The Fieldings start their process way before the season starts. “I just love brainstorming short film ideas, so I just have a running document where I do that…then our practices for short film look a little different because you write your script, what your film angles are going to be, and then you go out and film.” Julia says.
Another short film group took inspiration from Taylor Swift. Co-Directors Niya Miller (Junior) and Laura Martens (Senior), with the help of Caleb Olson (Senior), Rylan Edwards (Senior), Noah Ericksen (Junior), Grace Hendrickson (Sophomore), Lia Van Horn (Freshman), Ella Sunday (Freshman), Lyla Hey (Freshman), and Marie Klostermann (Sophomore) put together a film based on the Folklore love triangle; a series of 3 songs off of Taylor’s album folklore. Director Laura Martens talks about where the group got the idea from; saying “We basically took our Taylor Swift obsession and saw it as an opportunity to show other people our obsession. We tried to throw little hints in there that it was about Taylor Swift by wearing her merch and sometimes dropping lyric or song references, while still not making it too obviously about her.”
“Filming ‘romantic’ scenes with a group of people who are all friends is actually so much fun. Filming the scene with Niya and Caleb in the car, with me, Noah, and Marie in the backseat all filming from different angles and trying not to laugh because of the awkwardness,” Laura adds, “There’s so many clips of us ruining a take because we just start laughing. Those moments really did make it fun to film.” The group got overall 2s at state, and got to show their film at the Dewitt Opera House Theater.
Another unique event in Speech is musical theater. We had 2 musical theater groups this year; “Rooftop Duet” performed by Juniors Jack Butler and Brooklyn Quick, and “Crazier than You” from The Addams Family performed by Adam Wilke and Emily Sutton, both Juniors. Adam and Emily also performed this in the fall musical, The Addams Family, this year. Both of these groups got 1s at districts, and overall 1s at state.
“At the start it was very much ‘Even though it’s musical theater, you aren’t going to sing it, you’re going to say it and act it, like poetry. What are you naturally going to do?” Jack says. The process for putting together this event can be tricky, because along with being a good actor and performer, you also need to be a good singer.
Pre-recorded events like Radio Broadcasting, an event similar to podcasting, are getting more and more popular. This season, Central Dewitt entered 2 groups into the contest: “The Dead Wives Podcast”, a podcast about the 6 wives of King Henry VIII played by Senior Jenny Claussen, Junior Niya Miller, Junior Brooklyn Quick, Junior Nazahra Gambleton, Senior Hannah Moore, and Freshman Grace Burzlaff. The other group is called “Kids at Noon”, created by Freshmen Lena Perrone and Chloe Blanchard, set after the Beatles broke up.
The Dead Wives Podcast wasn’t supposed to be a podcast. The group originally wanted to do a Reader’s Theater performance, but struggled to find a script they loved. They tossed a few ideas around and landed on this. “It was very, very last minute but it came together by the skin of our teeth. I’m really happy with the product we have now.” Jenny, who played Katherine of Aragon, says. The group got overall 1s at state.
The most unique event in Speech is probably Group Mime. Nazahra Gambleton, a junior, and Ella Taylor, a freshman, put together a Group Mime performance set in the Wild West. The performance got overall 1s at state.
“Outside of our meetings with coaches Ella worked on miming specific movements and practicing over and over to get our music relatively lined up. I think the hardest part is facials, there are some sections where it is hard to think of an expression to wear on your face.” Nazahra says.
The most popular event this year was Ensemble Acting, with 3 different entries. “Seafood Science Lab”, by Junior Eli Dimmick and Senior Julia Fielding, “Flowers From Our Father” by Seniors Livy Crandall and Hannah Moore, and “Rainbow Unicorn Happyland Adventure… Or Not” by Juniors Jack Butler and Suzie Cox.
“It really consisted of me and Suzie talking with Magill the whole time because no matter what we came to her with, she always finds a way to add to the conversation and validate everything we’re saying. We would just practice our script and blocking.” Jack says. All 3 of our ensemble acting groups got straight 1s at state.
Team members reflect on the season, saying “I joined because pretty much all of my friends are in it, and I went to the meeting to learn more about it and I heard about just how many different events there are, and how it's very different from what people think of when they think of speech. I stayed because of all the events you can do and how much variety there is,” Short Film Director Laura Martens says.
“I definitely told Coach McCart at Districts that I regretted not joining until my senior year! I think people should at least try it out so you don’t have regrets by your senior year.” Jenny Claussen said.
Now that Large Group is done, the team begins to transition to Individual Events, where each member can perform up to 2 events. We host Districts IE on March 1st.
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