7.2: Organizing

Overview

It is essential for performers to consider the overall theme, message, and intended audience while organizing oral interpretation performances. Thoughtful organization ensures that selected sections of text highlight main ideas, maintain dramatic tension, and engage listeners, often reflecting elements of dramatic structure such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, even in non-linear works. Performers must also plan how to portray characters, use voice and body, and manage transitions to create a seamless and emotionally resonant presentation. Programs can include multiple works centered around a common theme, allowing for creative juxtapositions that highlight contrasts between characters, moods, or ideas, enhancing meaning, emotional impact, and audience engagement. By carefully analyzing each piece and making deliberate choices in delivery, performers can craft dynamic, memorable performances that effectively convey the essence of the literature.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): An example of juxtaposition. (CC-BY; Thomas Bresson - reconstit-belfort)

Learning Objectives

1. Identify themes, messages, and elements of dramatic structure in a work or multiple works to create a cohesive oral interpretation performance.
2. Recognize what juxtaposition is and use contrasting characters, moods, themes, or time shifts to enhance emotional impact, clarify meaning, and engage the audience in their performance.
3. Apply voice, body language, and transitions to portray characters distinctly, maintain dramatic tension, and deliver a seamless and compelling performance.

Organizing

When preparing a performance, it is essential to consider the overall theme and message of the work, as well as the audience who will be watching. In the context of oral interpretation, organizing means arranging and structuring the selected pieces of literature (or segments of a longer work) in a clear, purposeful way to create a smooth, engaging, and meaningful performance. This involves deciding the order of pieces or sections, managing transitions, balancing pacing and mood, and ensuring the overall flow supports the theme or message you want to convey to the audience. Good organization helps keep the audience interested and makes the story or theme easier to understand and emotionally impactful. Effective performances also reflect elements of dramatic structure, such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, even when the original text is non-linear. Additionally, performers must plan how they will portray characters, use voice and body, and manage transitions between segments. These elements work together to create a seamless and emotionally resonant performance. 

Oral interpretation of literature presents a performer with marvelous potential. Because the art of oral interpretation is not typically tied to costumes, props, scenery, and lighting (as would be the case in a play or movie), there is room for much flexibility in the sorts of literature the performer can present to an audience. A performer need not only perform one piece of literature. In fact, it is common for an oral interpretation program to include multiple pieces that all center around a particular theme, concept, message, lesson, or thesis. One can use the cutting advice from the previous section of this chapter to take segments from various works of literature to create a performance program.

Of course, this sort of interpretation program may put further demand on the performer in voice and body to ensure the works of literature and personae within them are distinct. But, when the performer fully understands the theme of the program, has analyzed and fully understands each work included, and gives careful thought and practice to vocal and body language delivery choices, the effect can be rewarding for audience and performer.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Activity 1: Thematic Mini-Performance

Objective: Practice organizing a short oral interpretation performance around a clear theme.

Instructions:

1. Choose a Theme: Pick one central idea or emotion (e.g., courage, humor, friendship).

2. Select a Text: Choose a short poem, story excerpt, or scene that fits your theme.

3. Plan the Performance:

   • Identify the beginning, middle, and end of your piece.

   • Decide how you will use voice, tone, and body to highlight characters or emotions.

4. Perform: Present your 1–2 minute segment to the class or a partner.

5. Reflect: Share one way you emphasized the theme and one challenge you faced in organizing your performance.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is the literary technique of placing two or more ideas, characters, images, or elements side by side in order to highlight their differences, create contrast, or emphasize a particular effect. In oral interpretation, this can enhance meaning, mood, or emotional impact by showing how contrasting elements interact within a performance. Performers can use this technique to enhance the emotional impact, clarify themes, or make transitions more dramatic. Here’s how it might be applied:

1. Contrasting Characters – Alternating between two characters with opposing traits or viewpoints can highlight conflict or irony. For example, reading the dialogue of a calm, rational character immediately followed by a panicked or emotional character emphasizes their differences.

2. Shifting Moods or Tones – Juxtaposition can emphasize changes in tone, such as moving from a lighthearted or humorous section to a serious or tragic moment. The contrast makes both moments feel more vivid to the audience.

3. Theme Enhancement – Placing opposing ideas side by side—such as hope vs. despair, freedom vs. confinement, or love vs. betrayal—can underscore the central theme of the work and deepen audience understanding.

4. Time or Perspective Shifts – Juxtaposing past and present events, or contrasting a character’s thoughts with their actions, can clarify narrative structure and create tension or dramatic irony.

5. Pacing and Rhythm – Juxtaposition can help control the pace of a performance. A slow, reflective passage followed by a fast, energetic one can create momentum and keep the audience engaged.

In short, performers use juxtaposition to highlight contrasts, emphasize meaning, and engage the audience, making the interpretation more dynamic and memorable.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)

Activity 2: Juxtaposition in Action

Objective: Practice using juxtaposition to create contrast and enhance meaning in oral interpretation.

Instructions:

1. Select a Text: Choose a short dialogue, poem, or scene with at least two contrasting ideas, characters, or moods.

2. Identify Contrasts: Mark sections that show opposing traits, emotions, or themes (e.g., calm vs. panicked, humor vs. tragedy).

3. Perform in Juxtaposition: Read or act the contrasting sections back-to-back, emphasizing the differences through voice, tone, and body language.

4. Reflect: Explain how the contrast changed the emotional impact or clarified the theme for the audience.