'Go Tire!'

Though scarred from head to toe, Tyr Hawkaluk isn’t afraid to get in front of an audience

Tyr Hawkaluk is a lot of things, talkative, amusing and perhaps a little eccentric — he once stuffed himself into a locker every lunch hour for an entire week — but one thing he is not is self-conscious.

“It’s just another thing you learn to deal with,” Hawkaluk said of the scars he received from a house fire.

He was only two years old at the time of the accident and to this day he receives treatment for the tissue damage. However, the Ronan High School junior doesn’t let his appearance get in the way of performing in front of peers and judges.

And why should he? He’s good at what he does.

Hawkaluk doesn’t feel his appearance puts him at a disadvantage in competitive events such as speech and drama, but it does come with its own unique challenges. Because he has undergone so many surgeries — about 54 — the smell of a sterilized room will trigger Hawkaluk to pass out.

“The smell reminds me of an operating room,” he said. “My mind just ties it to sleep.”

But Hawkaluk’s scars don’t detract from his personality, and he’s an asset to his team. Hawkaluk took second in humourous solo at last week’s divisional speech/drama tournament in Polson.

One of the only problems Hawkaluk encounters while performing is his first name, pronounced “tear” as in crying. It isn’t uncommon for judges to call him “tire.” The mispronunciation quickly caught on with his teammates who shout “Go Tire!” when he gets up to perform.

“I don’t know what it is about my first name. No one knows how to pronounce it,” he laughed.

Since participating in speech and drama his freshman year, he has gained the confidence and public speaking skills that comes with routine competition.

“I used to be afraid of it,” he said of speaking in front of the classroom. “But I now know how to deal with it better. I can do stuff a little easier in front of a group now if I have to.”

He contributed to the speech and drama team’s third place finish in Whitefish last month, missing second place by a single point. Performances by Ronan’s humorous soloists produced a 1-2-3 sweep of that event. Hawkaluk’s piece “Acme If I Care” is giving the team a competitive edge.

Posing as a man interviewing a candidate for a position with a fictitious company, Hawkaluk delivers his performance with animated energy and hits each joke with a veteran comic’s timing.

“We have a slogan here at ACME: ‘ACME if I care.’ Get it? Course you do. You’re an English major and that’s what I like about you,” he says to the interviewee.

Hawkaluk goes on to say that the ACME corporation is a large supporter of the arts.

“We realize many of our employees are misfits or artists or some sort of riffraff, so we have developed a scholarship, or grant if you will, and we call this grant the ACME Foundation for the Arts — ACME FArts for short.”

Chock full of puns and scatological humor, Hawkaluk was immediately sold on the piece.

“The first time I read through the script, we were laughing the entire time. We just didn’t stop,” he said.

However, Hawkaluk would soon learn that comedy can be tough.

“My first meet was terrible because no one laughed and I was like ‘Did I do this piece wrong?’” he said. “It’s sad because you can know your piece is funny and you know that everyone else in the room thinks it’s funny, but if the judge doesn’t laugh, people will not laugh.”

But he eventually hit his stride. He found that he could deliver the piece with more confidence by not gauging his performance on how judges respond.

“When you get one of those stone-faced judges, you are so nervous.,” he said. “I know when I have one usually because you can tell by their demeanor, or by how they sit.”

However, many speech and drama judges maintain a poker face so as to not put pressure on the next performer. Hawkaluk found that a judge’s demeanor doesn’t necessarily reflect what they think of the performer. For example, one judge who didn’t express any amusement at all toward “ACME If I Care” wrote very complimentary remarks.

“Sometimes when you think you did good, you did bad. And sometimes when you think you did bad, you did good. I can just never tell,” he said.

But still, it’s encouraging when a judge finally breaks, he added.

“My best meet, I had three judges laughing,” he said. “It’s such a relief.”

For Hawkaluk, speech and drama provides him an opportunity to exercise his acting chops, and it’s something he plans to pursue in college.

The program is catching on with other students. Last year, Hawkaluk was on a team of five. This year, almost 20 students make up the RHS speech and drama team, leaving Hawkaluk to wonder “Why is there this sudden explosion of people who want to do this stuff?”

Speech and debate coach Phil Engeldrum has been building the program up, touting how much fun it is. Also, it doesn’t hurt that last year’s starting basketball player, Al Skogen, took an interest in competitive drama. If speech and debate is cool with the school’s top athletes, then it becomes more widely accepted, Engeldrum explained.

And being on a larger team has its benefits, one of which is more recognition from other competing teams.

“Last year we were one of the smallest teams,” he said. “This year, we actually got recognized at an assembly.”