What an energising, engaging, even electrifying, show-stopping evening we had at Excalibur’s Guest Night Showcase last night. The room was buzzing with 33 attendees including 11 guests, all present to experience the best of what Excalibur has to offer. And we didn’t disappoint!
Paul Andreas Sergeant-at-Arms, opened the meeting with “oomph”! This was followed by Lynne Cantor’s Presidential welcome speech on Challenge, Quality and Variety, which was part of the PR Advanced Manual, Project 1 ‘The Goodwill Speech’. Lynne highlighted what Excalibur, a “club of excellence”, is all about, including our focus on intriguing introductions, taxing table topics and effective evaluations.
All in green Cat Kipling then took command of the meeting as the Toastmaster of the Evening in her efficient, organised, collected manner. We knew we were in safe hands in the cocoon of Cat’s text book introductions – she had obviously done her homework so was able to share something about the speaker that we didn’t already know.
“Captain” Bob Ferguson mainly pitted members against guests in the Table Topics vs Evaluation session with topics ranging from “is there a right time to do a wrong thing, or a wrong time to do the right thing”, “what modern wonder would you add to the seven wonders of the ancient world’, the ultimate escape and modern day hero. He took no prisoners in the instantaneous evaluations, expecting us to deliver specific what, why and how people could improve.
Giovanna Vasaturo delivered the first prepared speech “Professional Speakers” from project 3 ‘The Winning Proposal’ in the Persuasive Speaking manual, inspiring us to take our speeches to the next level, which was evaluated by Odile Facih.
The second speech was Irene Bradshaw’s memorable and visually descriptive monologue rant on “The Space Invaders” from Humorously Speaking Manual project 2 ‘Leave Them With A Smile’, that was full of wonderful descriptive phrases and vocal variety and was evaluated by Errol Williamson.
Simon Bucknall, delivering from Project 4 ‘The Touching Story’ in the Storytelling manual, enthralled us with his tale from inside Brixton maximum security jail! encouraging us all to take risks. This was evaluated by Katja van Koten.
Chinkata Okpara led the (controversial at times!) open feedback on not just the speeches but also the speech evaluators, where the audience had their chance to have their say on what they thought the speakers did well, or how they could have done even better.
Simon Cooper in his role as timekeeper delivered timely reports throughout the evening and was disappointed he only got to ring his bell once!
With a challenge from Cat as to whether maximising his stage time or getting to the pub in time for a free pint from Cat was more important(!), Freddie Daniells provided insightful “feedback on those who have not yet had it”, a slight improvement on last week’s agenda!! He, in turn, challenged us to up our game with our concluding commendations.*
Congratulations to Suzi Fish who was the Best Table Topics speaker, Errol Williamson who won the Best Evaluator and to Simon Bucknall as the winner of the Prepared Speech.
Our 11 guests all appeared to enjoy our jam packed showcase and are very welcome to visit again or even join us! Contact us at excaliburspeakers@gmail.com.
All in all, a successful and stupendous jam packed evening.
At our next meeting on Wednesday 9th November, Irene Bradshaw will be delivering a workshop on how to breathe!
The one-day District 91 Conference and Humorous Speech and Table Topics Finals will be on Saturday 5th November2016 in Woking. Our member Bob Ferguson will be delivering a workshop on leadership, and our President Lynne Cantor will be part of the High Performance Leadership (HPL) panel. Book your place here.
Please like, comment, tag and share our posts on our Facebook page, as well as follow us on Twitter.
*P.S. Freddie did decide a pint was more important meaning the drinks were on Cat!!
No comments:
Post a Comment