Touro Communication Club Notes #55

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Have a great holiday!. See you in the New Year!

This Week: Communication Club Holiday Potluck Gathering –

Room 610 @ 50 West 23^rd St.

This Potluck Gathering is a first for the Communication Club. It tests the sense of community that club members have for each other. (Remember anyone can belong to the club.)

The price of admission is a food offering for three people if you plan to join us. Please be aware the food must be kosher. (Call the Communication office for guidelines.) The Communication department will provide the plates, napkins, cups, beverages and utensils.

A stern word about this potluck gathering: Like everything we do in the Club, having a gathering with food is an experiment, a different test of our ability to communicate.

A potluck meal is a special occasion for breaking bread with people who share a common interest. The food you bring is to share with others. If you don’t bring an offering, you won’t have anything to share. You will be a taker, instead of a sharer. And from a Communication point of view, I don’t think you want to send the kind of message that is not representative of your best self.

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The Club has no budget and the success of this first potluck party depends on people not assuming there are going to get free food. If you don’t bring food for three, please don’t plan to join us. And doesn’t everyone buy a box of Enteman cookies!

Communication lessons from current events:

During each week, there are literally hundreds of communication issues that arise from our individual experience as well as observations from the world around us.

1. President Bush has 2 shoes thrown at him during a Baghdad press conference with Premier Maliki. (Iraqi culture views throwing shoes as a sign of contempt.) What is the message for Americans?

2. Illinois Governor Blagojevich is arrested for trying the sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. What is the message?

3. A $50 billion Ponzi scheme collapsed on Wall Street last week. What’s the message?

4. The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear a lawsuit saying that Obama is ineligible to serve as President because his father was a citizen of Kenya. What is the message?

5. Over 200 people, including several Americans, are killed last week in a coordinated bombing on 10 hotels in Mombai, India. What is the message?

6. Pirates continue to raid shipping off the Somali coast. What’s the message?

7. Fighting continues in the Congo and Rwanda. What’s the message?

8. President-elect Obama appoints a Nobel Prize winner to be his Secretary of Energy (the first Nobel Prize winner to be appointed to a Presidential cabinet.) What’s that message?

9. Recent anecdote: Student says in class, “I get confused when I think. Therefore I don’t like to think.” What is that message?

Each response to the question, “What’s the message?” will be different. As you try to respond to the question, here are some basics before we look at the message.

1. Then we begin the process of analyzing the “message.”
2. What are the facts?
3. What is the context surrounding the facts?
4. What ancillary information must you know to understand the facts and their context?

Now we get to the “message” itself.

1. Explain the “message.”
2. Did you notice anything different or the same about the “message”?
3. Compare this “message” to other “messages” about which you are aware.
4. What are the patterns?
5. Did you notice anything about the patterns?

This question can be applied to everything we do. I argue that we can learn much from around us if we ask key questions. And the more we get in the habit of asking questions and analyzing information, the more adept we will be at understanding issues in our daily life. (More in the future.)

Our upcoming schedule is:

Wednesday, January 7, 2008 - 2 pm - Room 223 - Midtown– SPAR Debate – After the holidays, we need to tune up our brains to prepare for finals and the new semester. For those who’ve never participated, SPAR debate stands for SPontaneous Argumentation. We learn to think on our feet, developing a line of reasoning about a silly topic. Practice in learning how to think on your feet defending such topics as “Greed is Good” or “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

Wednesday, January 14, 2008– 2 pm – Room 223 – Midtown –

Club Discussion on “How Power Affects Communication.” What is Power? Do I have Pow er? Do others have Power? How does Power And/or the lack of it affect Communication? We’ll share stories and try to come up with some conclusions about Power.

What happened on Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at the Theatre Workshop – Improvisation Technique?

The group was an enthusiastic one, willing to undertake every challenge. They included James Millner, Lorinda Moore, Amina Bibi, Brian Brown, Geovanny Leon, Hal Wicke and newcomers Meggy Lindsay, Ronnie Samuels, Delfina Domingo and Anna Indelicato, Meggy and Geovanny were the lst and 3^rd Prize winners in the recent 6^th Speech Contest. Lorinda was a finalist in the 4^{th Speech Contest.}

^{Hal asked James to share a little background on the play, “Fences” by August Wilson. Two males were talking as they entered. In rotation, two players read the first 6 speeches. They were asked what they could learn about the characters that would help the performance. Each pair built on the information of the previous pair. We only scratched the surface of what an actor – and director – have to do to bring the play to life.}

^{This part of acting training is called “Scene Study.” If you weren’t interested in acting, you might think this was an English class where the process is called “Close Reading.” In French, it is is called CExplication de texte.” The difference between what an actor does and an English student does is that the actor must make the words become alive after all the intellectual analysis. You might call it “Critical Thinking” times ten.}

^{The next sequences of exercises began with the basics of breathing followed by imagining the various sizes of human beings. Then the actors were asked to impersonate a teacher followed by a series of individual activities like threading a needle and eating pizza.}

^{The session concluded with an improvisation between two tenants. Each had a different intension and each had to invent their character in response to the other actor’s presentation. Then Hal gave each pair of actors a private instruction (“You’re your ch aracter as if he/she were a kitty cat, snake, Doberman pinscher, etc.). Every performance changed radically from the first attempts.}

^{Everyone left excited by the experience and wanting to schedule another session. There will be another Theatre session in January.}

<sup>These sessions are always open for everyone to attend. Bring a friend and join in the excitement. See you next time.

Hal Wicke</sup>