Oral Interpretation Book

I. Basic Principles

1. A Beginning and an End

Interpretation Requires Communicating Interpretation Engages an Audience Interpretation Involves a Literary Work in Its Intellectual and Emotional Entirety Interpretation Celebrates a Literary Work in Its Aesthetic Entirety Important Early Questions: Why Perform? Is this Acting?
Sources of Material Intertextuality Choosing Your Selection: Three Touchstones. The Sense of Death, Helen Hoyt. I Felt a Funeral, Emily Dickinson. Dulce, Deborah Sherman Preliminary Analysis: Hoyt's Poem Preliminary Analysis: Dickinson's Poem Preliminary Analysis: Sherman's Story

2. Analyzing the Selection

Preparing the First Performance

Major Structural Components: New Words, Maury Yeston

Major Aesthetic Components

Using the Tools: The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin. I Felt a Funeral, Emily Dickinson

Synthesis

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, Walt Whitman. Sonnet, John Keats. The Starlight Night, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Desert Places, Robert Frost. From A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote. Ringing the Bells, Anne Sexton. Dreaming, Amanda McBroom. Homework, Peter Cameron. Upon Learning That a Junior High School Acquaintance Has Been Nominated for an Academy Award, Joanne Gilbert. How to Watch Your Brother Die, Michael Lassell. From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling

3. Voice Development for Oral Interpretation

Relaxation Technique

Breath Control

Volume and Projection

Pitch and Quality: The Wild Honeysuckle, Philip Freneau. From I Hear America Singing, Walt Whitman

Rate and Pause

Intelligibility of Speech

Dialect

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: A Night at the Opera, William Matthews. From A Very Rigid Search, Jonathan Safran Foer. Confess, Early and Often, Jane Smiley. Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll. From The Little Girls, Elizabeth Bowen. Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold. Back at the Ranch, Jay Allison. Her Story, Naomi Long Madgett. The Lesson, Toni Cade Bambara. From The Night Chant, Navajo Ceremonial Chant, Translated by Washington Matthews. From Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon. The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently, Thomas Lux

4. Use of the Body in Oral Interpretation

Technique

Posture

Kinesics

Sense Imagery

Empathy

Using Your Body in Rehearsal

Eye Contact

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats. Flying Finish, Bill Hayes. Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, James Wright. From Friday Night Lights, H. G. Bissinger. The .38, Ted Joans. Still Life, Diane Ackerman. Girl, Jamaica Kincaid. Affirmative Action, Lucille Clifton. The Race, Sharon Olds. The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Langston Hughes. Old Lady's Winter Words, Theodore Roethke. From Jarheads, Anthony Swofford. From As You Like It, William Shakespeare. Admission of Failure, Phyllis Koestenbaum

II. Interpretation of Prose

5. Style and Types in Fiction and Nonfiction

Style

Types of Prose

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: From June Recital, Eudora Welty. From The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan. From The Revolution Remembered, John C. Dann, Editor. From Everything We Had, Al Santoli, Editor. From The Seacoast of Despair, Joan Didion. From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou. From Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, Lillian Schlissel, Editor. The Makeup Artist, Dana Tierney. To Austin Dickinson, Emily Dickinson. From Working, Studs Terkel. KEEP OUT! (A Boy's Bedroom), Lynda Barry

6. Narration

Who Is Telling the Story? Point of View

What Is Going on Here? Action and Plot

What Sort of People Live in This Story? Character

What Are They Saying to Each Other? Dialogue

Creating Character

Where Is All This Taking Place? Setting

Cutting and Excerpting

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: The Prison, Bernard Malamud. A&P, John Updike. Snow, Ann Beattie. From Sula, Toni Morrison. From The Lost Language of Cranes, David Leavitt. Popular Mechanics, Raymond Carver. Jacob's Chicken, Milos Macourek. The Key to My Father, Harlan Coben. From The Conversion of the Jews, Philip Roth

III. Interpretation of Drama

7. Solo Performance of Drama

The Nature of Drama

Why Perform Drama?

What Is the Difference Between Acting and Interpretation?

Structural Elements of a Play

Analyzing a Scene

Working a Scene

Rhythm

Style

Scenography

Putting It Together

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: From Fifth of July, Lanford Wilson. From Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith. From Othello, William Shakespeare. From She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith. From Flyin' West, Pearl Cleage

8. Technique in Drama

Technique in Interpretation

Properties

Embodying Characters

Coordinating Bodies and Voices of Characters

Physical Contact

Interplay of Characters

Physical Focus

The Reading Stand

Cutting and Excerpting

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: From Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim. From Curse of the Starving Class, Sam Shepard. From Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare. From Betrayal, Scene Five, Harold Pinter. From Death and the King's Horseman, Wole Soyinka

IV. Interpretation of Poetry

9. Language of Poetry

Poetic Content

Classification of Poetry

Figurative Language: To Autumn, John Keats

Poetic Syntax

Tone Color

Titles

Analysis and Poems

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: Power, Corrine Hales. The Windhover, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Toast, Susan Minot. Wild Grapes, Robert Frost. Spring is like a perhaps hand, e. e. cummings. The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm, Wallace Stevens. Nikki-Rosa, Nikki Giovanni. Saving Memory, Mary Stewart Hammond. Mid-Term Break, Seamus Heaney. On Sleeping Together, Barbara Howes. Talking in Bed, Philip Larkin. The Hospital Window, James Dickey. Most Like an Arch This Marriage, John Ciardi. First Grade, William Stafford. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Imamu Amiri Baraka

10. Structure of Poetry

Why Study Prosody?

Kinds of Verse

The Stanza

The Line

Cadences

Rhyme

Intention and Performance

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: One Art, Elizabeth Bishop. The Walking, Theodore Roethke. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas. Journey of the Magi, T. S. Eliot. The Magi, Louise Glück. A Blessing, James Wright. Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon. Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic? Garrett Kaoru Hongo. My Last Duchess, Robert Browning. The Kilgore Rangerette Whose Life Was Ruined, Cynthia MacDonald. From Fatal Interview, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Cinderella, Anne Sexton. Cinderella's Story, Mona Van Duyn. Today Is a Day of Great Joy, Victor Hernandez Cruz. From Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, Alice Walker.

V. Group Performance

11. Group Performance of Literature

Readers Theater

Chamber Theater

Group Performance of Compiled Scripts

Other Kinds of Literature

Directing the Group Performance of Literature

Some Concluding Cautions

Analyzing the Rehearsal and the Performance

Selections for Analysis and Oral Interpretation: From The Metamorphoses, Ovid. From The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Section III, Bertolt Brecht. 40-Love, Roger McGough. Forsythia, Mary Ellen Solt. Apfel, Reinhard Döhl. From Oedipus the King, Sophocles. Unforgiven, David Ray. After the Overdose, Robin Robertson. From Sunday Bloody Sunday, Penelope Gilliatt

Appendix A. Building and Presenting a Program

Selecting Material

Unifying the Program: A Traditional Method

Using Multiple Readers, Different Types of Literature, and Multimedia

Staging the New York Times

Other Options

Adapting to the Audience