Cutting

[OverMyHead]

Do you cut your own pieces or have your coaches do it? If you do cut them yourself, how long does it tend to take and what do you think is the hardest category to cut for? If your coaches cut, does your team keep like a database of cut pieces or do you start new every year?

[KErnst]

My old coach at Hermantown has and I am not kidding like a thousand scripts. If a kid wants to do one of them she will cut it or the student will if it's not already cut and the team keeps a copy of it for future years. She has been a coach for 20 years or so, so that explains the amount of pieces but it's pretty cool also she trades with other coaches.

It think it would be impossible to start completely over ever year, if you didn't have a good starting point then your team I don't think to build a successful program, sure a couple of good individual speakers but nothing more. I currently I am trying to cut/trade and organize last minute for the season, so I like the idea of keeping all of your pieces for furure years and handing them off, but ultimately its up to the student to which piece they want if nothing that the coach has is what they want many of them go and find a piece and start cutting if they have a hard time cutting it they ask for the coaches help, the system works great.

[Nocturne]

It really depends. Our coach has alot of cuttings, but if you go to her with a full novel to cut, she will do it in a few hours (she's a speed reader)

For our final, we were all given different scripts/ full length plays and we had to cut them for HI/DI/Duo. It was pretty fun, mainly because my script was hilarious.


D.I. seems the hardest for me, mainly trying to find a nice balance between funny and sad, and the flowing throughout the piece.

[ria]

you should always keep your pieces for future years. it's so much better and more convenient. i'm the librarian for our team, and it's my job to keep up with all of our books, cuttings, scripts, etc. it's insane, but i love it.

as far as cutting, usually we try to cut our own pieces if we're experienced. the older kids will cut for the newbies until they can learn how to do it themselves. and then we help each other, too. i'm a senior, but i had at least four different people look at my solo at the beginning of this year b/c i needed more cut and i couldn't do it. our coach does help with cutting, but usually, we do it. and that's fine, he does so much else that we can't have evey person on the team running to lasure for cuttings.

i can't think of any one event that's the hardest to cut. no matter what you're cutting, you have to make sure it flows well and makes sense. i suppose it's easier to cut interps than it is to cut a dec or oratory. but maybe that's just because i'm a hard core interper who's never done a speaking event before. i'd like to try oratory, but it's a little too late....oh well. there's always college speech. (i hope!)