Students Thoughts on the Monologue Competition

LEESBURG, VA: On March 1st, 2023 at 7pm in the Library, Tuscarora Performing Arts put together a monologue competition for the students.

“The monologue competition was created a couple years ago to give an outlet to our theatre goers who are particularly interested in writing and the competition serves to create original monologues and to find a talented writer from that,” senior Claudia Hunn stated.

Students signed up to write an original monologue and other students signed up to perform said monologues at a showcase. Then there were students who signed up for both.

“I performed a monologue that was The View from the Other Side that was by Oliver Stoltz and it was about this old town in Maine,” freshman Peyton Gull said, “And then I wrote Green.”

The competition gave writers in the theatre department a way to show off their work and get to see it performed. It was a fun way to show off talents in theatre that aren’t normally able to be shown.

“Writing was a lot of hard work and late nights,” Gull stated, “I turned mine in a little last minute but it was good.”

There are three judges, this time being theater teacher and director Mr. Justin Daniel, English and Creative Writing teacher Mr. Geoffrey Van Duyne, and choreographer and lead actress in the spring musical, Dillan Vanzego. These judges read the monologues and then watch performers show them. Once both scores are added up, the winners are announced.

There are two winners for the writing competition. Only the writing is judged. The two monologues that win end up getting published in the theatre department’s monologue library in the Black Box for other students to read and perform.

“I would definitely make the performing aspect of it also competitive,” junior James Mangovski stated.

The whole competition was organized and hosted by Hunn, who is the student president for the theatre department. She orginaizes all the social events and leads the business meetings. She created the monologue competition her sophomore year and had decided to bring it back!

“I MCed the showcare as well as coordinated with judges. So I was also in charge of making sure the scores came out correctly to determine our winners. I was also in charge of wrangling the actors and writers, making sure everything got submitted on time and that everyone’s questions got answered before they submitted their competition entries,” Hunn said.

This year there were eight monologues written. Each monologue was given the limit of half a page to allow the actors be able memorize them in a timely manner for the showcase.

“I was nervous at first going into it, because I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to memorize the monologue in time but the farther I got into the process the more it’s not as hard as I thought it would be,” Mangovski said.

The monologues were Insanity by senior Gwenalyn Abrams and performed by sophomore D’Andre Bullock, The View from the Other Side by sophomore Oliver Stoltz and performed by Gull, Green by Gull and performed by junior Emma Marfia, Garden of Glass by sophomore MacArthur Maryn and performed by junior Rachael Giessmann, Let’s Find a Hero by sophomore Alyce Snead and performed by junior Ava Peach, Here We Are Again by freshman Carolyn Snead and performed by Mangovski, I’m Out by senior Michael Anthony and performed by Abrams, and lastly, The 11th Hour by Bullock and performed by Stoltz.

“I just think that the showcase event is such a great culmination of everyone’s skills and it was really cool to see everyone come together for the final product of bringing these world premiere monologues to life,” Hunn said.

In first place, Anthony’s I’m Out won. The description for it being “a writer talks to a friend about their struggle to still find inspiration and passion for writing.” In second place, both Snead’s tied for their monologues Here We Are Again and Let’s Find a Hero. The description for Here We Are Again reads “a person talks to themself about their separating friend group, desperately trying to hold their friends together and keep them from arguing, but starting to have doubts about if what they’re doing is right.” And for Let’s Find a Hero it is described as “A naive high schooler resorts to using trope-like tactics so she can find a superhero that will heal her sick mother.”

“I was pleasantly surprised for sure. I knew that everyone had written good monologues, so I wasn’t sure I would get better scores. It all felt very validating,” Anthony stated.

Students hope that the monologue competition will continue to come back so the writer can continue to show off their work and actors can have more opportunities to perform.

When asked if the monologue competition would happen again, Hunn said, “I sure hope so. Whoever is President next year, I will definitely be pestering them over text from wherever I am to make sure this happens again because I just think it’s a great event that kind of shakes things up.”