Tuesday, February 17, 2004

By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A great concourse of the famous surged back and forth across the O'Reilly Theater stage in Downtown Pittsburgh last night, from kings, queens and warriors to buffoons, lovers and witty servants.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Nomi Leasure (right) , age 12, of Mt. Washington, rehearses her role from" The Comedy of Errors" while scene mate Chelsea Mervis , left, also 12, of Squirrel Hill, watches backstage Click photo for larger image.

Blood was spilled, passion plighted and silliness turned into art. Shakespeare was the playwright, of course, but the performers were 43 students from urban, suburban and rural schools of Western Pennsylvania, grades 4-12, all enacting bits of the Bard in the Pittsburgh Public Theater's 10th annual Shakespeare Monologue and Scene Contest.

Those 43 were selected from nearly 850 entrants who had showed their stuff before teams of judges all last week. The result was last night's 100-minute Showcase of Finalists, featuring 18 monologues and eight scenes.

In the upper division (grades 8-12), the monologue winner was Lara Hillier of Upper Saint Clair High School, performing as the tragic Egyptian queen from "Antony and Cleopatra."

The upper division scene winners were a group from Freedom Area High School, doing a shortened version of the "Pyramus & Thisbe" playlet from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" -- Donald Carpenter, Jeremy Inman, Tim Maier, Ben Patsch and Joe Choflet.

In the lower division (grades 4-7), the monologue winners were two, Aidan MacDonagh of Carson Middle School and Carter Redwood of Frick International Studies Academy, who did two famous title characters, "Hamlet" and "Othello," respectively.

Lower division scene winners were Samuel Karas and Sara Fisher of Rogers Middle School for the Creative and Performing Arts, playing the ferocious title couple from "Macbeth."

Those five plays are among Shakespeare's most famous, but the evening also saw fine performances of much more unusual excerpts from "Coriolanus," "Cymbeline" and "Henry IV, Part 2."

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Sisters Kathy Thompson , left, age 10, with her older sister Carrie (center) age 12, and Carrie's twin Jenny. The three sisters from Upper St. Clair were about to perform as the three witches from Macbeth. Click photo for larger image.

Overall, the performances were evenly split, 13 from comedies and 13 from tragedies and history plays. Performance styles varied: Emotions were delivered with deeply passionate simplicity or trumpeted to tatters; comedy ranged from subtle sophistication to brawling schtick.

In introducing the winners, Ted Pappas, Public Theater artistic and executive director, claimed it was his favorite event of the year on the O'Reilly stage, specifically because it gave him such an optimistic view of the future that so many young people willingly tackle Shakespeare with such imagination and skill.

Ken Rice of KDKA-TV introduced the evening. The six judges were Pappas; Kyle Brenton, the Public's resident dramaturg; Richard Rauh, philanthropist, actor and assistant professor at Point Park University; Robin Walsh, actor and assistant professor at Point Park; David M. Shribman, executive editor and vice-president, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; and Ross Bickell, currently playing the father in the Public's "The Subject Was Roses."

Each winner received a complete works of Shakespeare, courtesy of Jay's Book Stall in Oakland. All finalists received tickets to the Public Theater and all 850-plus entrants received contest T-shirts.

In the contest's 10 years, nearly 4,700 students from more than 110 schools in southwest Pennsylvania have participated.

This year's contest was sponsored by the Laurel Foundation, the Dominion Foundation and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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