Video transcript
@The Arts Unit Art Bites – Impromptu-ing with the stars – secondary public speaking – 01. With Justin Lai

[music playing]

TONY DAVEY: Hey, Justin. How's things?

JUSTIN LAI: Hey, Tony. Things are going all right I've been keeping it chill during quarantine. I have not been going outside and have been trying to keep my time good.

TONY DAVEY: That's good to hear. That's excellent to hear.

So, first of all, can you quickly say hello to us and let us know how you went in public speaking as a high school kid?

JUSTIN LAI: All right. Hey, everyone. My name is Justin.

And I did a lot of public speaking at sort of the tail end of my high school life. I did the Plain English Speaking Award when I was in Year 12. I managed to be the state winner for New South Wales. Then I went and became the national winner for Australia. And then in 2019, when I was in the first year of my university, I went and competed in the International Public Speaking Competition representing Australia where I was lucky enough to be named runner up.

And in those years as well I've been doing a lot of adjudicating, helping out The Arts Unit, and doing a lot of good stuff around the state helping kids do public speaking. So, yeah. That's me.

TONY DAVEY: That's right. You might even have run into Justin at the odd workshop. And yeah. Just a note out there for anyone thinking of joining PESA this year, the New South Wales winner is expected to go on and win the national competition as well. That's just par for the course. So, you have to do your state proud. That's very good, Justin.

All right. So.

JUSTIN LAI: Thank you.

TONY DAVEY: Let me just quickly, here's what we're going to do today. I'm going to give you an impromptu topic so that kids can see what impromptu writing looks like. And then I'm going to give you three minutes, which is the official time that you get in the Plain English Speaking Award to prepare.

And we're not going to let you off camera. And we're not going to pause. I promise this is going to be live and real. And then at the end of three minutes I'll pull you back, and you will give the speech. So, you reckon you're up for that?

JUSTIN LAI: Well, it's been a while. But I think I'll give it a shot.

TONY DAVEY: All right. Let's go. All right. So, here we go.

I'm just going to grab my timer. The topic I'm going to give you guys - don't tell any of the other people. I'm going to get a couple of other people to do this. Topic I'm going to give you guys is off the scale. Do you want to repeat it back?

JUSTIN LAI: Off the scale.

TONY DAVEY: Off the scale. All right. So, I am going to start the timer for three minutes, now.

JUSTIN LAI: All right. So, I first get the topic. And it's kind of like, confusing. The first thing you have to do here is to sort of just understand what the topic is trying to say. So, I get off the scale.

And I'm sort of bouncing it off ideas that, you know, I have thought about and I am familiar with. And my first instinct, my gut instinct, is to talk about something on a scale of what you understand. And so something that is off of that scale, whether it be in terms of scale like literal size or in terms of understanding. And what I do here is I sort of decide internally I'm going to write about celebrity culture in the wake of the coronavirus because that's something that a lot of people have been talking about, but also something that I find fits really well with the bill.

My introduction here is kind of like, cause I work chronologically from top to bottom rather than sort of planning out an entire speech in the three minutes of just sort of, you know, beginning, middle, end. I want to sort of work through it organically so I get a good sense of everything.

I start with maybe writing about imagine. Like that weird kind of sort of Instagram video that people talked about. Because that's I think with examples the best thing to do in an impromptu is name examples and have a real grasp of the world around you. And I also have examples that I think about like Cardi B, like Ella, that I really want to use. So, I'm thinking about ways I can put those in.

And a lot of my speech is structured around making sure I have those references to the real world, that I'm not just talking into thin air. So, going into things like, for example, the next part I'm thinking about how do I transition from just an introduction into the meat of what I'm talking about. That's actually a little bit difficult in any impromptu situation.

So, when I write about, OK. I always like to end my introduction with, like, an affirmation of the topic itself because it's a nice way of sort of bookmarking everything I'm talking about. I'm not repeating the introduction too much. But I'm getting a good sense of how it's thematically spread across the entire speech.

And when I ended it with that I can sort of then start talking about something else. I then move on to things like, for example, literally what I'm talking about. So, I mention things like celebrity culture off the bat. And then I develop that a little bit more by talking about what the state of the world is like, what do celebrities literally do, how are they responded to.

And then the last sort of third of my speech is dedicated to sort of the moralising bit where I'm going to talk about, OK, what is kind of the lesson we need to learn here? What is the sort of world view that we're talking about? Celebrities are trying to be relatable, but at the end of the day, they're not like us. They're rich, and they live in cool houses, and we don't. And they don't understand the struggles that we go through.

And so that's kind of the message I want to get across. And I sort of elaborate on it a little bit. But importantly, I don't write everything down. I write bits of it down. I write things that help me understand what I'm gonna say. Because a lot of the time when you're speaking, you're sort of just making things up on the spot anyways.

And so, when you write things down, you're writing a plan of things down. And you kind of broadly know what it sounds like in your head. So, yeah.

TONY DAVEY: OK. Three minutes. Here you go.

JUSTIN LAI: Oh.

TONY DAVEY: I know, right?

JUSTIN LAI: Fast.

TONY DAVEY: So, you now have got a 20-second walk back to the auditorium or whatever it normally is, back to the school hall. Yeah, you're walking. You get that extra 15 seconds to think to yourself and get whatever palm cards in order.

And then yeah. All right. So, I'm going to call on you to deliver your speech. I don't have a bell, I just realised. So, I am going to - I'll give a clap at two minutes. And I'll give two claps at three minutes if you reach three minutes. All good?

JUSTIN LAI: Fair enough.

TONY DAVEY: Here we go then. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome with his impromptu topic - gosh. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome with the impromptu speech off the scale, Justin Lai. Yay, Justin! Woo! Yay.

JUSTIN LAI: I think there was not a single moment that changed my opinion of the world during quarantine that a decision to watch a single video. It was on Instagram posted to Gal Gadot's account. And the video was simple. A bunch of celebrities, each singing various lines of John Lennon's 'Imagine' in an attempt to assuage fears of an uncertain world.

Now, normally people would laugh this up. A personal message from Gal Gadot and so many others. Some would cringe slightly and move on.

But, with a pandemic that has altered the fabric of society, and the response of myself and so many others was one of off the scale outrage. That video was important because of how quickly it signified our dissatisfaction and the rapid fall thus of celebrity worship.

When countries issued quarantines, we saw celebrities take to social media encouraging people to flatten the curve. But as time went on, we saw the destruction of that facade. We saw people like Cardi B crying about eating cereal in the morning or Ellen complaining that her expansive house resembled prison.

Both of these and many more were subject to lambastings on social media. You see, celebrities endeavour to be relatable these days. Social media has allowed a window into the celebrity mind that is often used in carefully curated ways.

We're human. We wake up with messy hair. We eat breakfast just like you guys.

Celebrities endeavour to be on a scale that is relatable to us. They try to minimise the excess and the absurdity that characterised so much of celebrity culture before the creation of the internet.

But, what this pandemic has done is just shown that we are entirely different from celebrities. What it has done is shown that their attempts at relatability are nothing more than just a hollow ploy for popularity to stay relevant at a time where the focus is not on them.

Entire countries have been thrown into turmoil. People's lives are at stake. And the most vulnerable are at threat of dying.

And when we're told the difficulties of being a celebrity and we're told about how difficult it is to be in the fame and the spotlight and to live in a gigantic house, those attempts remain hollow and facetious. Celebrities try to remain on our scale, but the coronavirus has exposed how deeply off it they are.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah. Fantastic stuff, Justin. Excellent and fun speech. Hope that wasn't too terrifying. Yeah?

JUSTIN LAI: It was a little bit terrifying. You never get, like, out of the terrifying nature of an impromptu. Even if you've done them a while. So.

TONY DAVEY: That's right. Even if it's - it's not even a competition. Although there will be lots of people watching. So thank you for subjecting yourself to that.

So like, what questions do I have? At the beginning, when you're talking about off the scale, you're like, our reaction to celebrities was off the scale because we were so angry. And I thought that was really clever. And then later it was about kind of the different worlds, the different scales on which people live.

So was that - that was deliberate that you're using it in two different ways?

JUSTIN LAI: Yeah. And to any kid out there who's doing an impromptu, at least, maybe when you're thinking about a topic you think about multiple ways of doing it. A really, really strong thing to do is sort of put them into the same speech.

I always try to, you know, have different interpretations of a topic in the same kind of impromptu because it demonstrates, like, one, that you can be witty and clever. But two, that there is more than just a what meets the eye of a topic, and that there is a lot more that you can sort of mention in a single topic that really elevates the concept beyond just sort of I'm going to talk about this. There are like clever references to this and that, and you're playing around with it. So.

TONY DAVEY: Yeah.

JUSTIN LAI: It was definitely deliberate.

TONY DAVEY: I think the clever use was really clear. That was excellent stuff.

Do you have any final tips for anyone trying to do an impromptu?

JUSTIN LAI: I would say work fast because when you're in an impromptu, you just need to write. Don't think too much about little details. Try and get as much done as possible. Because I think a lot of people, their fault is that they want to get itty bitty things right. And then they worry about how they say something in the impromptu. That's the last thing I worry about.

I literally worry about writing something down and whether I'm going to be able to write it out in time. And when I get up there and speak, no one knows what's on my palm cards anyways. So, the problem is not me. The problem is saying what I want to say to other people. So, just work fast and work quickly.

TONY DAVEY: That's super interesting. All right. Fantastic stuff.

I'm going to let you go. Thank you again for putting up with that and going through it with us. And stay safe out there. Hopefully we'll see you back in the real world soon.

JUSTIN LAI: Yeah. Hopefully I get to do more Arts Unit stuff and see aspiring people out there soon as well.

TONY DAVEY: That's right. And if you are, by the way, joining the Plain English Speaking Award, there's a solid chance we make Justin adjudicate some of that stuff as well, if he's not too busy with uni exams. So, you might hear from him. All right.

See you around, Justin.

JUSTIN LAI: See you, Tony.