LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — Local area high school students faced off Wednesday afternoon in a Shakespeare monologue slam.
The People's Shakespeare Project hosted its fifth annual battle as literature lovers packed The Ware Center in Lancaster for the intense faceoff.
"This is the only high school Shakespeare festival in the county," said Jeremiah Miller, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Project. "They get to interact with students from other high schools and they get a Shakespeare script and have to learn it in a couple of hours."
Students from high schools, including Ephrata, Lancaster County Day, Linden Hall, McCaskey and York County Day faced off to see who could perform the best Shakespeare monologue.
"For a lot of rehearsals, we get at least a month, if not a couple weeks, to work on a performance," said Grave Stover, a York County Day High School senior. "So to only have a few hours is really intense."
At the end of the workshop, students were put to the test when they were placed in small groups of people from other high schools to perform Shakespeare scenes on the fly.
"You just have to try to make it work and trust the process. You trust them, they trust you," said Isaiah Miller, a McCaskey High School junior.
"Learning about [Shakespeare] and his work is extremely beneficial for young minds. You learn so much about what it means to be a human being reading Shakespeare and his work is so timeless," said Jeremiah Miller.
First-place winners in the competition included Sophie Uhlenbruck from Linden Hall School for Girls, Cole Gable from the Lancaster County Day School and Mia Rock from McCaskey High School. They performed act 1, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew."