LIHU‘E — Four students from Kaua‘i High School performed monologues from Shakespeare’s celebrated plays last Friday, participating in a national annual competition sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. English teacher Tara Niemeier has spearheaded the event for
LIHU‘E — Four students from Kaua‘i High School performed monologues from Shakespeare’s celebrated plays last Friday, participating in a national annual competition sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. English teacher Tara Niemeier has spearheaded the event for the last three years.
Close to 20 students had practiced monologues to perform, but four showed up to the contest, Niemeier said. Alden Ho, Toby Riggle, Geomar Acob and Melissa Peck performed monologues in Niemeier’s classroom after school, with Peck winning for her performance as Juliet from “Romeo and Juliet.”
Peck will go on to O‘ahu to perform a monologue and a sonnet with other statewide competitors.
“Melissa had been practicing for a couple of weeks,” Niemeier said. “She’d come to me at lunch and say, ‘Explain this line to me.’”
Riggle, who came in a close second place, is a well-known stage actor on Kaua‘i. Riggle studied eight different monologues for the contest, according to Jonathan Medeiros, an English teacher at Kaua‘i High who stood in as a judge on Friday.
The winner for the state of Hawai’i goes to compete with sixteen thousand other students at the national level in New York next April, performing two monologues and two sonnets.
The winner of the ESU National Competition receives a full tuition to study in England for the summer.
Niemeier, Medeiros and other English teachers at Kaua‘i High spend a considerable amount of time teaching Shakespeare each year.
“We spend a lot of time on Shakespeare’s life, and learn to write sonnets,” Niemeier said, adding that the students enjoy writing in the sonnet form.
“It’s a formula that’s contained,” Niemeier said of the sonnet and iambic pentameter structure.
“I tell my students they can write about football as long as it’s in sonnet form,” she said.
Acting out the plays is an
effective avenue for students to grasp the complex language and content of Shakespeare. Groups are assigned scenes and act them out in class, Medeiros said.
“Plays in general are not meant to be read silently,” Medeiros said.
“Almost against their will they become experts on it because of acting out and discussion,” he added.
All grades at Kaua‘i High study Shakespeare. The ninth grade studies “Romeo and Juliet,” tenth grade studies “Julius Caesar,” eleventh grade studies “Macbeth” and “Taming of the Shrew,” and twelfth grade tackles “Hamlet.”
Medeiros spearheads his own competition each fall, with a state-sponsored writing competition.
It’s a chance for students to practice analytical and persuasive writing, he said. The theme for this year’s contest was “culturally important heritage sites.”
Winning the competition is rewarded by a chance to “shadow the Legislature,” Medeiros said.
Other teachers at Kaua‘i High host slam poetry competitions during lunch time, some invite students to read their poetry aloud at public venues like Borders, and participate in the annual statewide “Literature Festival,” where students meet and discuss books they have read with the authors themselves.
For more information on the ESU Shakespeare Competition or to view performances from past winners, visit www.esusf.org/shakespeare.html.
