An “Open” Season for the ICC Speech Team

EAST PEORIA — The Illinois Central College Speech Team recently closed out one of the best seasons in the last two decades. This year was historic for the team, as they earned the chance to compete at Pi Kappa Delta, a National Comprehensive Tournament, which includes community colleges and 4-year universities.

Before the tournament, the team held a showcase of their national-bound performances at ICC in the 127F Lecture/Recital Hall on March 6th. It featured six performances by team members Marques Brown, Mark Nabors, Alexander Pabon, Christina Kaufman and Jill Kern.

Jill Kern and Christina Kaufman started the event with their duet act “Whatever.” The scene opened with both girls acting sensationally while trying to find a pigeon in their apartment. One of the girls, who claims to have seen the pigeon flying around in the apartment to the girl who hasn’t, is drunk. The banter and slurred words continue, but are turned around as the girl’s friend councils her on a recent breakup. They went on to talk about love, loss and stalking. Eliciting both laughter and sobering seriousness, the dynamic piece was a fine start to the showcase.

Next up was freshman Mark Nabors’ oral interpretation piece, which combined poetry, a piece of prose and dramatic interpretation. Interweaving the pieces together in no particular order, Nabors effortlessly jumped from character to character, showing many sides of each. Citing writers John Bartimole, Jess Walters and Eddie Soe for the piece, Nabors portrayed the emotions in their respective writings, which are often dreary and reflective. He showed serious skills as a young orator.

Team captain Marques Brown followed Nabors with his “After-Dinner Speech,” for which he played a character hilariously exploring the “crisis in higher education.” Subjects included unionization of adjunct professors, economic issues with teacher salaries, and generalities in the school system. The topics were very serious, Brown was anything but. He shouted, he danced around and he impersonated Michael Jackson twice. Brown showed why he’s leader of the pack, and that his skills could be shown at a national level.

Brown was followed by an impromptu speech by freshman Alexander Pabon. Given a quote from the audience, Pabon was given two minutes to create and remember a formal thematic speech. Going off Ernest Hemingway’s quote “Courage is grace under pressure,” Pabon gave an oration of courage for more than five minutes. Topics he explored include Thomas Edison, “Meet the Robinsons” and SpongeBob, all of which came back to the importance and nature of courage. For instance, Edison had to have a tremendous amount of courage to invent the light bulb and SpongeBob to admit he never should have ripped his pants. Pabon’s diction and confidence in this particular piece were very impressive, showing much grace under the pressure.

Jill Kern then returned to the stage to perform “Uncle,” a solo Prose piece. Telling the story of her attempted murder, the overall tone of the piece was tense, bleak and disturbing. Kern nearly mastered her role, a young woman on a farm who attempted to kill her close relative. As she did in her duet with Kaufman, Kern showed incredible skill in portraying and perfecting her character.

Finally, Marques Brown gave the evening’s final performance, a composition of selected poetry inspired by his influences Rudie Francisco, Carlos Andres Gomez and Big Poppa E. With his near-flawless tone shifts and animation, Brown explored loss of innocence and impurities of adulthood, making it the heaviest performance of the showcase. The speech further exemplified Brown’s master of craft, and certainly convinced the audience that the ICC speech team deserved to be where they were headed.

In a pool of 80 teams, including four-year university teams, the outcome at the Indianapolis Nationals was better than the team expected. “We were pleasantly surprised,” said Alexander Pabon, who took 6th Individual Debate Speaker, Top 24 in Extemporaneous Speaking, and Top 30% in Impromptu. “We weren’t really expecting anything.”

The rest of the team did well, with Mark Nabors winning 19th Individual Speaker Debate and Top 8 Debate with Pabon. Marques Brown cleaned house for his final competition with ICC, winning Top 24 in Program of Oral Interpretation, “After-Dinner Speech,” Persuasion, and Impromptu. He also won 9th in Individual Sweeps and earned in the top 30% in Excellence in Poetry.

The team as a whole took 4th overall in the community college pool, and 21st overall in the entire tournament, earning 24 fewer points than El Paso Community College.

As stated, the Speech Team’s season was one of the best in the last two decades and the first that earned them an opportunity for a four-year National tournament. Next year will see the return of everybody but Marques Brown, who will move on to Northern Illinois University in the fall of 2014.