Theatre sports speech

Theatre Sports Run Down
(With Allan Morris providing the ''arms'' for me in an expert double figures demonstration)
Mr Toastmaster, fellow members and guests.
As toastmasters, we are looking for ways to improve the way we communicate.
For some of us that's about thinking on the spot, for others it's about feeling more comfortable standing in front of an audience or speaking more forcefully and clearly.
I'd like to tell you tonight a side project of mine that I believe is helping me develop in those areas and I believe could help other toastmasters.
It's called theatre sports and it's a form of improvised theatre where participants use their bodies and their wits to entertain an audience.
Thank you Allan for helping me demonstrate one of the games we learned in the course - it's known as expert double figures.
Late last year I review a theatre sports tournament called the cranston cup.
For those of you who weren't here for that or don't remember, please allow me to recap a little about theatre sports' origins and what it's all about.
The concept was born in Canada in the 1970s when a university theatre teacher called Keith Johnstone noticed while sports like ice hockey and american football attracted massive crowd, the theatre was quite poorly attended.
He decided it was because people attending sporting events felt they were guaranteed a good time, that they felt an involvement with what they were watching, that they could vocalise their feelings by yelling out and support a particular team.
He adopted the old adage if you can't beat them join them and developed theatre sports which takes the best of sport and combines it with theatre.
Theatre sports usually involves several teams of three or four people coming together at a venue like a theatre or a pub.
In front of an audience they then play a series of improvisation games and a panel of judges rates each game.
Points are gained for originality, structure and how well the audience is entertained. The audience is encourage to cheer and clap and if things go very badly to boo.
At the end of the night the team with the most points is the winner.
There are dozens of games which can be played and teams have no idea which one they will be roped into.
Let me explain a couple of the most popular ones:
In expert double figures, which Allan helped me partially demonstrate earlier, two players provide the ''arms'' for two characters in a scene by looping their arms through their armpits. The characters then have a conversation which their hand movements provided by the support players. The effect of expressive hairy arms stroking the chin of a slim young woman can be hilarious.
In Crime Scene endowment one of the player is nominated the criminal and leaves the room. The audience then come up with a crime he has committed, a location where it took place and a well-known accomplice. He returns to the room and is interrogated by two ''police officers'' from his team who have to communicate to him the crime he has committed without actually saying it. If Allan was the criminal accused of stealing lollies and I was playing the officer I might say: Sit down Mr Cadbury. Bit of a sweet tooth have we sir....
I loved watching theatre sports as an audience member and decided to sign up for a level one class run by improv australia, a respected theatre sports school.
I hoped to improve my comfort in front of an audience and gain greater self-expression.
The first class was a nightmare for me. I felt way out of my depth. Out of a class of 15 it seemed I was the only one without previous theatre experience.
I persevered though and learned the basic rule of theatre sports was to support other players and accept offers made by them.
We started with simple exercises - someone would adopt a pose in front of the class - like this - and a classmate would get up and act in a way that made sense of it. ''don't shoot''.
From there we began playing out simple scenes where one person would pretend to be washing a car or painting a house and a classmate would get up and talk to him and they would play out a scene.
We went on to learn fun games with bizarre names including death in a minute, sing about it, typewriter and pop-up story book.
I had high points and low points as the course progressed. Some of my performances were stinkers, but gradually some began to work.
I moved on to the level two course where we were taught some stagecraft with a view to performing in front of a live audience. We learned more games and got better at the ones we already knew.
Finally on Friday two weeks ago we performed for the first time as a group.
A crowd of about 75 people turned up to the Clarence Hotel on Parramatta Rd at Leichhardt and nine of us took to the stage, hoping to do our best and make them laugh.
It was frightening, but also exhilerating.
Some of the games I was in bombed. But others worked really well. When a judge held up a maximum points card for one of the scenes I was in I was chuffed.
I learned it's okay if things sometimes don't work out so well on stage.
It's worth it because it can be a real pleasure to perform.
I'd recommend a theatre sports course to anyone here who would like to go out their comfort zone and improve their communication skills.