Presentation Speech

I chose to use my paper to illuminate the topic of the roles we play. Everyone in this classroom is performing right now--their personality, their hairstyle, their clothes, the way they sit, talk, and where their feet are on the floor. Are they popular? Are they nerds? Are they interesting? Are they boring? Are they stoners? Are they Jesus lovers or atheists? Everyone is in here today, I see. Everyone sits before me sliding into the role which is most comfortable and most practiced. Who are you? Who are any of you? Shakespeare constantly dealt with the breaking down of identity, with the collapsing of not only the world around you, but you yourself. Men dressed as women and women as men to illustrate the performance of gender. Mechanics act like aristocrats before the aristocrats to make fun of culture roles. These walls we put up, of who we are and what we should be, are simply acts, shows, plays we put on for others (just as Antony and Cleopatra are never alone). You are not who you say you are! I can almost hear Shakespeare scream it across 4 centuries, an ocean, and a continent. The key to what Shakespeare was trying to say, I think, was that you have to discover the role you are performing and then perform the very best you can. If you are going to be a lover, be the best lover there ever was. If you are going to be a tragic hero, be the best damn tragic hero you can be. If you are going to be a fool, a comedian, act that fool like no other. Why half-ass something like a performance? You need to live it, ham it up, Jesus, people come on.