The following is a summary of the judges’ comments on the performances of the 2009
Youth Diplomat Contest:
It’s good to see a variety of themes in this year’s plays, e.g., ecological or
environmental concerns, tradition vs. innovation, combating prejudice and stereotypes,
voluntarism and disaster relief efforts. It’s also good to see our high school students
were so confident and composed on stage. However, there’s still room for
improvement for the play. Here are the judges’ suggestions regarding the drama
performance:
(1) Give students more space for their creation. In order to allow them to contribute
more to the play, organizers can assign a less serious or an open-ended topic or
theme for the drama contest in the future.
(2) Trust the creative process by investing just as much, if not more, time on
brainstorming and developing ideas.
(3) Create more conflicts between characters, which are what drama is about. If
possible, spend some time establishing the characters. Have the conflict unfold
in front of the audience’s eyes, instead of behind the scene.
(4) In addition to the TV format (e.g., a story delivered by a news reporter), create
your plot in other formats.
(5) Avoid clichés, stereotypes (i.e., the ways in which certain ethnic/racial/cultural
groups are depicted), profanity and discriminatory terms.
(6) Update your information or representation of a particular people/country.
(7) Weave your talent, be it dancing or martial arts, into the creation of your play.
(8) Use prop more creatively, not just as background.
(9) Instill more humor into your play.
(10) Rather than having the commonplace roles like mom and dad, use more
imagination when creating characters.
(11) Don’t end your play abruptly. If possible, end it on a bang, leaving something
for the audience to ponder on.
(12) To have more interaction with actors during the performance, the audience can
sit closer to the stage, and each participating school should also watch the
performances by other schools.
With regard to the group speech, the contestants had good command of English and
had done well in controlling the pace of the speech and distributing the speech equally
among the teammates. The judges had these suggestions for improvement regarding
the content, teamwork, and language and speaker’s gestures:
(1) Write the speeches yourselves through researching and discussing together as a
group. The more engaged you are in the drafting process, the better you will
remember the content of your speeches and the better your English will sound.
(2) Do research for your speeches carefully and responsibly. Do not fabricate data
or use doubtful information to support the points in your speech.
(3) When rehearsing the speeches, try to remember the ideas and the logic between
them, instead of memorizing the speech word for word. By so doing, the
wording of your speech may come out slightly different each time you deliver it.
However, as you’re less likely to forget the ideas than the exact wording, you
actually cut down the chances of not knowing what to say on stage.
(4) Team collaboration does not just refer to giving nonverbal support (nodding or
smiling) to one another; it also means stepping in and continuing the speech when
your teammates don’t know what to say. And, when showing your nonverbal
support, do not go overboard.
(5) Explore other possible ways of parceling out the speech among the four speakers.
For example, each speaker can present a different view point on the topic.
(6) Do not speak above your level of English proficiency. Do not stretch your
sentences and avoid complicated grammatical structures. On the other hand, if
you are capable of handling linguistic challenges, you should try to bring your
performance up to a higher level by varying the syntactic structure or the rhythm
of your delivery.
(7) Use gestures naturally and appropriately. Cute or exaggerated gestures or
gestures that are staged or memorized will not be received well by the audience.