Forensics Team Is Ready to Show Its Stuff

In preparation for the National Forensic Association’s (NFA) tournament held April 14-17 at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, the Lafayette Forensics Team will be hosting its annual performance night Monday, April 10 at 7 p.m. in Hugel Science Center room 100.

Team members participate throughout the school year in competitive inter-collegiate speech and debate. The NFA tournament represents a culmination of the season where students go up against other college teams from all over the country. This year, 14 students have qualified for the national event.

Scott Placke, director of forensics, says the annual performance night is used to get the team ready to compete, as well as show the campus the student’s talents. The presentation should last about an hour and will include five different performances.

The performances will be:

• Persuasion performed by Amy Solomito ’09 (Coopersburg, Pa.), an English major. ­ This is a persuasive speech Solomito has written herself about the Plan B birth control pill.
• Dramatic Interpretation will be done by Colby Block ’06 (Boca Raton, Fla.), a history, law, and ethics major. ­This is an acting monolog from Eve Ensler’s play The Good Body.
• Impromptu Speaking will be performed by Christian Dato ’07 (Poway, Calif.), a history and government and law major. This will be a speech about a quotation selected by a member of the audience. Dato will not know what the quotation will be ahead of time.
• Extemporaneous Speaking will be the work of Joe Borland ’06 (Wilkes Barre, Pa.) a government and law major. ­Borland will have 30 minutes to select, prepare, and give a speech related to one of three current event questions that he will not know about ahead of time.
• A Duo will be presented by Mark Kokoska ’08 (Bloomsburg, Pa.) a computer science major, and Rachel Heron ’09 (Downingtown, Pa.) an English major. This will be a two person performance from the play Answering the Echo by Larry Harris.

“The students would love to have a strong showing of faculty support at the performance night,” Placke says. “You may not be aware of what exactly the team does during competitions. We would like to show you what we do, and what we have been working on all year. Some of the performances will seem very speech-like while others will be very similar to acting. Hopefully, you will find the evening informative and entertaining.”