Table Topics Contest (that is: Improvised 2-minute speeches)
The first contestant comes to the stage and the contest master gives the (until then secret) topic: “Spice”
The contestant remains quiet, but her facial expression speaks louder than a thousand words. “What the hell is that for a topic?”
But there is no escape. In a few seconds, she has to open her presentation, which will be evaluated based her speech structure, content value and confident appearance. Then she begins. And once she finishes, the others go through the same, one by one.
Some mishear and instead of “Spice”, they talk about something else. So we hear talks about “Spikes”, “Spies”, and then one contestant hears a word that probably does not even exist. He publicly confesses he does not know its meaning — and gives us the suggestion that you have to prepare even for an unprepared speech.
Despite all that — each of them manages to entertain us, deliver a message and end with a smile. We reward all with a thunderous applause. Thanks to them we saw magic at work.
We witnessed the creation of something out of nothing.
Lukas Liebich
Program Quality Director District 110
