To a massive ovation, Alan Alda gave a brief acceptance speech
when he received his well-deserved Life Achievement Award from the Screen
Actors Guild. Smiling, looking frail, speaking firmly but gently, slowly, and with
dignity, he said one of the most important things one could ever hear: that an
actor’s job is to help us understand one another.
“This comes at a time,” he says, “when I’ve had a
chance to look back on my life and to think about what it means to be an actor.”
His saw an actor’s job as “to get inside
a character’s head, to search for a way see a life from that person’s point of
view, another person’s vision of the world.”
He related the point to our political and cultural
divisions: “It may never be more urgent to see the world through another person’s
eyes when the culture is divided so sharply.”
He received the honor; he explained why the honor
was so important. He was right, of course; we need to bridge the divides. We
don’t have to agree with one another, but we need to understand. Epideictic
speech at its best.
Alan Alda has, by the way, a long history of
giving superb speeches, and his speech transcripts over the years have been
included in speech anthologies.
P.S. Never forget how important good delivery is.
Alda spoke conversationally, warmly, and with emphasis. He didn’t yell; he didn’t
mumble; he paused frequently, made eye contact, and connected deeply with his audience.
For more about epideictic speech, search
in the box to the right.
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