Practicing Sincerity

I started thinking about authenticity the first time I saw a performance that talked about sexual assault. In one of the events that I do for Speech, Oral Interpretation (OI), we have two pieces that alternate every round: prose, a single storyline, and poetry, a collection of spliced works all covering the same topic. Importantly, it’s typically standard for OI pieces to be emotional narratives heavily manipulated by editing and, as the name suggests, an interpretation rather than a lived experience. This was a prose round, and I was so pleased with how I had done. I presented a really cool piece about artificial intelligence (AI) that was effectively a declaration of what could happen if our chatbots were given too much emotion, and I felt that I had nailed it. It was sharp, entertaining, and highly character-driven, even if it was a bit unusual that I was the AI robot itself. 

However, the next kid went up to perform, and delivered an excruciating speech about being a victim of sexual assault and handling the familial backlash. There were moments where the physical violence in the story itself was translated to the body language of the performer. Undoubtedly, it was a tremendously emotional piece. Later, after the round ended, I went to talk to this competitor because I had never met them before, and they told me about how their coach wanted them to do this piece because it “got a great reaction out of judges.” Honestly, hearing that hurt my soul a little. Not because they hadn’t delivered an objectively great speech, but rather because the sympathy I had been feeling just moments ago couldn’t be directly attributed to a real-life experience. I couldn’t tell how much of the performance belonged to the competitor, the author, or the coach. 

I think what actually bothered me about the speech was not really the fact that the competitor might not have been assaulted and that they weren’t drawing on their own experience. Lots of artists, such as actors and authors, talk about perspectives that aren’t their own. What really got to me was the fact that deeply traumatic material can so easily be rewarded for its emotional intensity, and therefore win a tournament. The goal wasn’t to communicate an important story; the goal was to increase competitive success by adding emotional intensity. Even that didn’t quite feel adequate, though. I mean, isn’t that what storytelling is for? To get a reaction from an audience? I really could not fathom why this particular performance made me so uneasy. 

In a Speech round, there are maybe four other competitors in the room, a judge, and the occasional parent spectator. We all get 10 minutes to perform and to bring a new and innovative piece to the room. Or at least, that’s the stated goal. The reality of a tournament, though, is that we find themes repeated throughout each performance because those are usually the ones that do well on the ballot, the judge’s ranking of competitors. Racism, sexism, violence, grief, the type of emotional arcs that are easier to understand emotionally—they all connect with judges well. I always try to watch my competition closely to unpack their every movement—perhaps I can utilize something in my own speeches—and, over time, I’ve begun to notice how rehearsed we all look to the trained eye. We spend hours and hours reviewing and refining even the tiniest details: a slight smirk, a small wince in the eyes, or even a slight tremble in the voice. Even the most seemingly insignificant hand motion has been thought through. While us Speech competitors often aim to appear spontaneous through our emotional vulnerability, it’s often those exact moments that are actually the most meticulously and thoroughly rehearsed. Importantly, these are also the moments that tend to determine placements on the ballot.

We try to be spontaneous, of course, because we typically think of spontaneity as sincere. It reflects a genuine presence in the world. Laughing at a joke in the moment, for instance, is evidence that both that the joke was entertaining and the person laughing was present in the conversation. That’s why conversations that don’t feel like they involve reading off a script are so desirable: emotions can shine instead of being hidden behind a screen. What’s suspicious is visible preparation that hinders one’s ability to react in real time. The more visible the performance, the less authentic the experience is. Speech, though, complicates this because preparation is impossible to ignore or avoid. It’s in its nature. 

I don’t think this is just a Speech-related issue, either. Thinking about it more, I realized that would be unreasonable. Speech only makes this issue more visible. We’re constantly performing and putting on versions of ourselves for others. College essays, for instance: we’re constantly told to “be authentic,” but we’re also constantly revising how to present that supposed authentic self. The idea of “trauma dumping” to get an admissions officer to feel sympathy is an example of this performance. Through our friendships and relationships, we learn how to say the right things in the right moments to help the people we care about. It’s a skill, definitely, but also a method of rehearsal. Even our apologies are often written, rehearsed, and revised ahead of schedule. Importantly, though, we don’t consider rehearsal to make our care less real. In other words, this isn’t a thing that only occurs in speech, because it’s not the supposed sincerity that makes us uncomfortable. Rather, the fact that this human connection can be so easily imitated and manipulated puts us in a position to fear that the sincerity we rely on may be false. 

With that logic, what unsettled me wasn’t unique to the speech; it was just an inherent removal of the distance we usually have from a performance. Through these pieces, we are able, though not required, to inhabit experiences we haven’t lived. I mean, I’m not an AI machine. It’s a good thing, too—if we only gave speeches about our own lived experiences, the berth of speeches would be incredibly narrow and possibly uninteresting. All narrative art forms, whether it be storytelling, literature, theatre, or art, require us to imagine other lives. Our empathy depends on this. There is a point, though, where this kind of representation gets uncomfortable, drawing closer and closer to an invisible line. I often wonder about what kind of responsibility we carry when telling stories that are not our own. What changes when another person’s indescribable trauma becomes an act we can coach, refine, and reward? It’s less about performing only personal experiences, and instead about how to be authentic without taking ownership over something that’s not ours. 

When I was in that room, witnessing that speech, I was emotionally charged. The acting was incredible. Yes, there were times I felt a little icky after knowing that this speech had been rehearsed and prepared to get that exact reaction out of me with, at least to the outside world, little consideration for actual representation of the topic. However, I learned about someone’s experience that day: the author of the text. Perhaps it was not the perfect way for me to hear about that experience, but it was the way that it happened. To be honest, I am still not sure where the true line is drawn for these kinds of pieces that deal with sensitive topics, especially as a competitor myself. Speech hasn’t clarified the tension; instead, it has just made it harder to ignore how easily sincerity can be practiced and still feel real in a room where it’s being judged.