Battle Ground High School juniors Carter Stafford and Elizabeth McAleer recently qualified for the national speech and debate tournament, which will take place in Des Moines, Iowa, next month.
While they continue to practice their 10-minute duo-interpretation piece, Stafford and McAleer are hoping for community support through donations made to the Battle Ground High School ASB office. Donations will help support travel expenses.
In speech and debate, students can give any number of performances depending on the event provided for students to interpret, McAleer said.
“We do duo-interpretation which is taking a pre-existing piece of literature and then interpreting it however we want to,” McAleer said.
In December, Stafford texted McAleer asking if she wanted to interpret Shakespeare. They wanted to stand out from other teams by providing humor to a duo-interpretation that often consists of interpreting real-world issues. After watching a video of an abbreviated version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the pair opted to transform the 40-minute piece to a 10-minute performance.
“Early in our story, we meet a wee lad named Hamlet when he stumbled upon the ghost of his late father, the king. Surprised by his father’s appearance, we then learn that he was actually murdered by his uncle Claudius who then assumes the throne and the title king,” McAleer said, performing her portion of the introduction to their interpretation after school on Thursday, May 2.
Hamlet was not pleased with what he learned.
“Furious at this information, Hamlet devises a plan to trick his uncle into revealing his malicious actions. He puts on a play that resembles the murder of his father in an attempt to enrage his uncle,” Stafford recited during their practice performance.
Claudius then creates a plan of his own after Hamlet’s plan works.
“[Claudius] hires Laertes, son of Polonius, to eliminate Hamlet with a poisoned blade,” McAleer performed after school on Thursday, May 2. “In the end, all hell breaks loose and everyone dies.”
The two performed their interpretation at a handful of speech and debate tournaments this year, with the biggest punching their ticket to the national tourney. Stafford and McAleer finished first in their event at the North Oregon National Qualifying Tournament in Salem, Oregon.
Until the national tournament, June 16-21, Stafford and McAleer will finish their Advanced Placement tests and practice in McAleer’s living room.
“After we get A.P. testing out of the way, it’s going to be a lot of what it was before, just practicing, which consists of sitting in my living room and reading our script, and then we talk about it,m and then we perform, and then we talk, and then we perform, and it’s a lot of yelling for my family to deal with, but that’s Ok,” McAleer said.
The pair said performing in speech and debate has helped give them confidence in speaking.
“For me, it’s more being able to make people’s lives slightly less dull for a very short period of time,” Stafford said. “... A lot of the stuff that you do see in duo is very serious and, yeah, what we’re doing it’s kind of, ‘Hey, that’s different.’ ”
The two have cherished the skills built in speech and debate, such as forming meaningful arguments and being better speakers. Stafford and McAleer encourage students interested to join the program.
McAleer said the program helps students become comfortable “speaking on your feet” and articulating things in a way that’s understandable for audiences.
“You learn a lot from doing it, and it is definitely worth it. At least give it a try,” Stafford said.
