The whole strategy of “write speech, practice doing that exact speech, then deliver it exactly as practiced” leaves no room to match the audience’s energy on the fly.
I don’t think this is true. Yes, you can’t ad-lib freely this way, but a lot of why I’m strongly in favor of getting off-book is that you can respond to the audience on the fly; mostly not with your words, but you can emote with body language, move, maybe shift the emphasis. You don’t want to be stuck to your script—that’s the point. This is probably a skill and not one I know how to teach because this part I think I just got right naturally, but I think it does come pretty naturally to most people, when they don’t feel stuck to checking their notes.
Separately, I expect for most people, even ones who are pretty good, heavy practice and polish on a prewritten script will have higher EV than ad-lib. Ad-libbing is higher variance, and you’re almost certainly right that it has a higher ceiling, but the downside is larger than the upside relative to a strategy of preparation and polish. (As well as requiring more skill.)
I don’t think this is true. Yes, you can’t ad-lib freely this way, but a lot of why I’m strongly in favor of getting off-book is that you can respond to the audience on the fly; mostly not with your words, but you can emote with body language, move, maybe shift the emphasis. You don’t want to be stuck to your script—that’s the point. This is probably a skill and not one I know how to teach because this part I think I just got right naturally, but I think it does come pretty naturally to most people, when they don’t feel stuck to checking their notes.
Separately, I expect for most people, even ones who are pretty good, heavy practice and polish on a prewritten script will have higher EV than ad-lib. Ad-libbing is higher variance, and you’re almost certainly right that it has a higher ceiling, but the downside is larger than the upside relative to a strategy of preparation and polish. (As well as requiring more skill.)