SpeechGeek - Nationals Prose and Poetry - Selections for oral interp events

In this collection, we've compiled 10 years of poetry and prose published for students attending NSDA Nationals in need of pieces for supplemental events. But these stories and poetry programs can be used all year! If you're searching for prose and poetry selections for UIL, NSDA, or local and state competitions, then look no further. We've bundled together over a dozen short stories and collections of poetry to help you prepare for competition and NSDA supplementals. They're all competition eligible with ISBN and copyright information included. With a focus on making an immediate impact with less preparation, these scripts are particularly good for novice performers, as well as experienced students looking to add more interp events to their competition schedule. Grab this set and start competing today with pieces proven to win at the highest level! Breaking the Water — Lorraine White A fisherman braces for his second child's birth while a coworker's betrayal and an old grief threaten to pull him under. • Playwright: Lorraine White • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, male Eight months into his wife Christine's pregnancy, a career fisherman tries to steady himself against the ordinary chaos of the job, the memory of a stillbirth they never talk about, and the fear that comes with risking his life at sea for a paycheck. When the fishery folds and the coworker who tipped him into a bar fight needles him about supporting his family, something in him finally snaps. He makes it to the hospital in time to learn his daughter was born safe, and the relief breaks over him like water. Man of Steel — Joseph Conway A man who hasn't felt a single emotion since his wife's death tries everything from therapy to a wilderness survival retreat to feel something again. • Playwright: Joseph Conway • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, male John can't cry at his wife Sarah's funeral, and can't cry for four years afterward, so he's run out of ideas: therapy, religion, diets, a six-week solo wilderness retreat meant to shock him back to life. Nothing works, until a terrified, tethered deer collapses on top of him during a desperate moment in the woods and dies in his arms. The grief he couldn't access for years finally breaks loose, and for the first time since Sarah died, he feels something: devastating, overdue, and almost like relief. The Shepherd of Chi-town — Doug Osgood A street performer explains the art of controlling a crowd from a safe emotional distance, and the one day it cost him. • Playwright: Doug Osgood • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, male A Chicago street performer breaks down his technique for working a crowd, the jokes, the timing, the practiced charm he's used since childhood to keep people laughing instead of looking too closely at him. It's a skill that keeps his girlfriend at arm's length and strangers delighted, until a woman in his audience silently mouths the word "please" while a controlling companion hauls her away. He finishes the show instead of chasing after her, takes home his earnings, and spends the night wondering what kind of man stays in character even when someone is actually asking for help. Mixed Up — Meredith Stein A teenage girl whose family once hid an interfaith marriage from her grandmother discovers her mother has prejudices of her own. • Playwright: Meredith Stein • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, female Growing up, the narrator's biggest family secret was that her Catholic mother and Jewish father never told her Jewish grandmother the kids weren't being raised in the faith. She assumes that kind of quiet bigotry died with her grandmother, until her mother objects to her friendship with a Black classmate, Marcus, and the easy chemistry the two of them share. The confrontation forces her to recognize that the prejudice she thought was a relic of an older generation is alive in her own kitchen. Cutting Cords — Trevor Anders Fraternal twins separated by an ocean and years of resentment find their way back to each other in one halting phone call. • Playwright: Trevor Anders • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, gender flexible On the day of his older brother's wedding, held in rural Kentucky while he's stranded at a gas station in England, the younger of two estranged fraternal twins forces himself to make the call he's been dreading. What should be a short, awkward exchange of pleasantries turns into something neither brother expects: a quiet, genuine declaration of love and a request to be carried along in spirit, however far apart they've grown. Could've Been Worse — Trevor Anders A disastrous blind date ends early, and a best friend's running list of ways it could've been worse turns out to be exactly what's needed. • Playwright: Trevor Anders • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, male An aspiring writer's blind date collapses the moment his date asks if he's ever been published, and spirals further when he responds with an increasingly unhinged superhero fantasy in front of the entire restaurant. After she storms out, his best friend Jeff, working the room as a waiter, talks him back from humiliation with an absurd list of ways the night could have gone worse, and a $6.66 check scrawled with a joke that says more than any pep talk could. Second Opinion — Steven Guthrie A lonely man who loves his twice-weekly doctor visits gets a diagnosis he refuses to accept. • Playwright: Steven Guthrie • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, male Fifty-six-year-old Mr. Ellison treasures his routine checkups, the small talk, the human touch of a hand on his pulse, more than almost anything else in his life. When his doctor finally tells him that his months of unexplained symptoms are rooted in loneliness rather than illness, he's offended rather than relieved, and immediately starts dialing for a second opinion that will tell him something he'd rather hear. My Week as the Other — Isabelle Owens A furious mother's letter to her son's principal turns into a sharp, unflinching account of what life as a woman actually costs. • Playwright: Isabelle Owens • Format: Prose Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, female When her son's English teacher assigns students to "pass" as someone unlike themselves for a week, inspired by Black Like Me, Isabelle Owens' son spends his week presenting as a girl. Her letter of complaint starts out sounding like outrage over propriety, then pivots hard: she isn't angry that her son wore makeup, she's furious that anyone thinks a week of play-acting could prepare him for what womanhood actually demands, and she lays out exactly what that life is like, line by line. Why I Tutor at the International Center — Grace Bruenderman A college tutor's awkward lessons with an adult refugee student turn into a real friendship, until he's targeted by the kind of ignorance she can't teach him to answer. • Playwright: Grace Bruenderman • Format: Poetry Interpretation • Cast: 1 performer, female What starts as a resume-building volunteer gig and a crush on the center's receptionist turns into something unexpectedly tender as the narrator and her student, Abdulghani, stumble through basic English together, word by word. She comes to see the poetry in the way he describes his own language, right up until he's confronted outside the classroom by bigoted college students, and she's left wondering whether she's taught him anything that will actually help him survive their hate. Growing Up Girl — Julia Nava A reimagined fairy tale about settling for "good enough," paired with a locker-room portrait of thirteen-year-old body image, into one program about growing up as a girl in America. • Playwright: Julia Nava • Format: Poetry Program Builder • Cast: 1 performer, female In "I Write Lullabies for Working Women," a storybook heroine named Goodie Nuff very nearly disappears into a life that is merely fine, before she rediscovers her own ambition and refuses to settle. In "Sharks Swim with More Honesty," a watchful thirteen-year-old navigates a junior high locker room of girls measuring, weighing, and starving themselves toward an impossible standard, and quietly resolves to survive it without losing herself. Together, the two poems trace the pressure to shrink, literally and figuratively, that comes with growing up a girl. Memory Drive — Michael Hix and Will Schuster An apology for a memory that keeps failing the people who matter most, paired with a child's attempt to conjure a father who was never really there. • Playwright: Michael Hix and Will Schuster • Format: Poetry Program Builder • Cast: 1 performer, gender flexible In "I Don't Mean to Malfunction," a forgetful partner catalogs the small, painful ways memory keeps letting down someone they love. In "Giving Up the Ghost," a child raised on their mother's stories about an absent father holds makeshift seances, scat-singing into the dark, trying to summon a connection to a man who was never fully present. Both poems turn memory, what it keeps and what it loses, into the thing that defines a relationship. Male Pregnancy — Jonathon Harper An anxious countdown to the words "we're pregnant," paired with a gay man's letter making the case that fatherhood isn't only biological. • Playwright: Jonathon Harper • Format: Poetry Program Builder • Cast: 1 performer, male In "On Your Mark," a young man counts down the longest hour of his life, waiting to find out whether his girlfriend is pregnant, and realizes mid-panic that he already knows he'll stay. In "Adoption Letter," a gay man writes directly to a pregnant teenager weighing adoption, arguing with aching sincerity that the one thing he can't do for a child is the only thing that actually separates a father from a mother. Redefining Romance — Sarah Carpenter A grand romantic gesture that backfired in a school parking lot, paired with a woman reclaiming her name from a boyfriend who'd rather call her "Kitty." • Playwright: Sarah Carpenter • Format: Poetry Program Builder • Cast: 1 performer, female In "Charging at Windmills," a young woman replays, mistake by mistake, the day she sewed a soccer player his own superhero cape and was humiliated for it in front of his teammates. In "Kitty," a woman traces a relationship built on cutesy, diminishing pet names to its breaking point, and finally demands to be called by her own name. Both poems insist it's long past time for women to stop waiting to be chosen and start doing the choosing.