News
Students Excel at Shakespeare Monologue Competition
On Monday, December 16, Middle and Upper School students competed in Oakcrest’s annual Shakespeare Monologue Competition. In the Middle School division, Ashleigh Yaghmour (‘25) took second place and Charlotte O’Beirne (‘24) won first. From the Upper School, Catalina Scheider Galiñanes ('21) won second place and Ava Quaale (‘21) placed first.
Ava will go on to represent Oakcrest at the regional National Shakespeare Competition hosted by the English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition.
In the competition, an annual school tradition, students choose their own monologues to perform. Middle and Upper School students recited pieces from a wide range of comedies, tragedies, and histories, including: Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, and Measure for Measure. Middle School performers each recited one monologue, while Upper School students performed a monologue from a play and, new this year, one Shakespeare sonnet of their choosing.
Oakcrest theatre teacher Dr. Kristin O’Malley sees this event as an amazing opportunity to delve into the genius of Shakespeare’s writing. “Shakespeare's plays were written to be performed and not read,” she says. “When we read his work solely in a classroom, we neglect to account for the nuance that performance adds to a dramatic text. Shakespeare's genius lies in the fact that his texts were structured specifically around the needs of the actor, providing unique devices in his work to help his actors memorize and perform quickly. The Monologue Competition asks students to engage with Shakespeare's works as actors rather than readers. In doing so, it encourages students to engage with the unique theatrical devices that Shakespeare included in his work that largely go unrecognized in a literary analysis.”
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Ava Quaale ('21) took first place with her performance of Sonnet 148 and Beatrice's monologue from Much Ado About Nothing.
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