Please visit our San Francisco Branch
Shakespeare Competition site for competition details!
Competition Overview
The English-Speaking Union's National Shakespeare Competition is a curriculum-based program designed to help high school students develop their language skills and dramatic talents through the memorization and interpretation of a monologue and sonnet. Teachers use the program as a tool to encourage and enhance the study of Shakespeare.
Started in 1983 with 500 students in New York City, the program now includes 16,000 students and 2,000 teachers in 58 communities nationwide. The number of competitors continues to grow each year.
In late winter each year the San Francisco branch hosts the Bay Area semi-finals, a day-long competition between contestants from local high schools. Our judges typically include an actor and two local teachers.
Prizes
The local semi-finalist is sent to New York City for the ESU's National Shakespeare Competition in April. The national winner receives a a month-long summer acting program in Britain at the British American Drama Academy.Winner of the 2010 Branch Competition!
The winner of the 2010 ESU San Francisco Branch Shakespeare competition was Ms Julia Finch! As usual, our judges had a hard time deciding, with fabulous performances by many competitors.
Julia Finch, 2010 SF Branch competition winner.
Who is Eligible
The competition is open to all high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Public, private and parochial schools are all encouraged to compete! To be eligible, students must be enrolled in the 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade. Note: contestants cannot be paid for any acting during the school year in which the competition occurs.How It Works
- The first stage takes place in individual schools, where teachers incorporate the program into their Shakespeare curriculum. These classroom activities typically culminate in a school-wide competition, for which students are required to memorize and present a monologue of 15 to 20 lines.
- The winners of the school competitions then go on to the next stage, the local San Francisco Branch finals, where they are asked to present both a monologue and a sonnet.
- The winner from each Branch goes on to the final stage, the National Competition, an all-expense paid weekend in New York City. At the National Competition, all contestants have the opportunity to perform at Lincoln Center. Those students selected as finalists from the 60 Branch winners perform a cold reading in addition to their monologue and sonnet. The purpose of this impromptu reading is to test the students' understanding of Shakespearean language, and the ease with which they can convey it.
San Francisco Branch finalists have placed in the top 10 nationally several times. Web video of the 2007 performances of the finalists is available online and you can see the performance of San Francisco finalist, Lily Drexler here, or view the rest of the top ten on the New Globe Theater's website. Please note that the videos take a while to download.
