Doane Forensics hosted a showcase last Tuesday, April 21, showcasing their five performers. The event started with Nathanial Wilson, a communication professor and director of forensics, giving a rundown of the forensics team’s achievements during their season.
The team competed in 16 tournaments and advanced to over 35 final rounds. “As a team that prides itself on service, it’s really important that we point out that we have hosted seven tournaments,” said Wilson.
The first performer was junior Jordynn Jerby, who won the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) in Prose Interpretation (DI). During the showcase, she performed a Dramatic Interpretation of “Weather Girl” by Brian Watkins. DI takes a piece of literature that is read or heard and cuts it down to ten minutes. The performance followed the story of a reporter covering a wildfire, grappling with her personal life and being picture-perfect.
The second performer was sophomore Brianna Wright, who is in her first year on Forensics, and Wilson discussed how she got interested in the team while writing an Owl article about the forensic reunion banquet. In her first two tournaments, she qualified for Nationals, the fastest way to qualify. During the showcase, she gave an Informative Presentation on malware targeting Artificial Intelligence and its impacts in the real world.
The third performer was freshman Channer Koeppe, who performed a Communication Analysis (CA). Assistant director of Forensics Jennier Torres explains CA works by “taking something, really anything, that communicates, doing a lot of research to find applicable communication research and using it as a lens to analyze the artifact.” Torres jokes that this is essentially like a grad-level research project. Their performance took fourth in GPAC. During the showcase, Koeppe discusses the history of gender-nonconforming Roman emperor Elagabalus and asks if we can “pull history out of the closet.”
The fourth performer was freshman Gunner Lippold. Torres talked about how they met him as a senior in high school and that he already had ideas about what kind of literature he might want to use and piece together into his events. During his first season, he was the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and GPAC champion in Poetry Interpretation. At the showcase, he performed a Poetry Interpretation about the intersection and, oftentimes, animosity between queer and religious spaces. During his performance, he discusses how queer people are told they can’t be themselves and cites statistics from queer nonprofits.
The last performer was sophomore Lillan Korbel, who performed a dramatic interpretation. Her performance was drawn from the true story of Kimberly Shappeley, a Texas mother discovering and accepting her transgender daughter and becoming a trans ally.
The showcase marked the end of the Forensics season, and they will celebrate at their end-of-year banquet in May.
