Activity Five: Audience Activity

Learning Outcomes:
1. Describe the historical audience.
2. Describe (a) possible contemporary audience(s).
3. Consider the significance of sharing this experience with other audience members.

Activity:
Thus far you have had the opportunity to read “A Creative Protest” in print, to listen to it on your own, and to experience it with a group. As you know, a quality public speaker is someone who centers the audience(s) for any given speech. Recording a speech in real time allows the audiences in that historical moment, as well as future audiences, a chance to experience a speech for its primary audience. In this experience, we have the chance to listen to a re-creation of a speech that includes attention to details of the original audience, including the use of historical recording equipment and the attendance of some folks
present at the 1960 speech. Because the re-creation is available in multiple media, it can also spread across the globe.

With all of these considerations in mind, answer the following questions:
 Who was the intended audience for this speech? Consider who the primary audience was, as well as any secondary or tertiary audiences that maybe have been implicated at the time the speech was given.
 For each audience, identify at least one moment in the text where that audience is directly addressed. For each audience, identify at least one moment in the text where the audience in indirectly addressed or implicated.
 Consider the audience listening to this speech in 1960. What do you think they may have been thinking as they listened to this speech? Feeling? Why?
 Why does it matter that people in 1960 were listening to this speech together?
 Consider the audience listening to this speech in 2014. What do you think they may have been thinking as they listened to this speech? Feeling? Why?
 Why does it matter that people in 2014 were listening to this speech together?
 What other audiences are implicated in this speech from 2014 to today? This may include audiences that you mentioned in your first two answers.
 For audiences from 2014 to now who were not at the re-creation, what might matter about listening to this speech alongside other people?
 How do you feel implicated as an audience member of this speech? What thoughts or feelings does listening to this speech on your own create within you? How does that change when you listen to it alongside other people?
 If you had the chance to share this speech with a particular audience, whom would you choose and why? What would you hope that audience would learn from this speech?