Home > Theater Reviews > Archives > 2008 > February > 19
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
August Wilson Monologue winners
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Three Atlanta high school students are headed to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., where they will reprise their prize-winning speeches from True Colors Theatre’s August Wilson Monologue Competition.
William Combs, a junior from East Point’s Tri-Cities High School, took first place in Monday night’s competition at the 14th Street Playhouse. Holding an oversize check for $500 and a brass plaque, Combs said he picked a comic monologue by the character Toledo from “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at the “very last minute.”
“My main thing was just to tell the story,” he said. “I guess that’s what did it.”
All told, 66 sophomores, juniors and seniors from 20 Atlanta-area high schools “had the courage to stand on this stage and make flesh the soaring poetry of August Wilson,” True Colors associate artistic director Todd Kreidler said. Of the nearly 70 students who performed in last week’s preliminaries, 16 were chosen for Monday’s finals.
“Don’t be afraid, just play the music,” Kreidler, a close colleague of Wilson’s, told the competitors. He was quoting Wilson quoting jazz giant Charlie Parker.
True Colors artistic director Kenny Leon could not attend the event because he was in London, staging Alicia Key’s concert tour and preparing for “Flashdance,” a new movie-based musical that opens in July and tour the United Kingdom.
The panel of judges, including Theatrical Outfit’s Tom Key and WSB-TV’s Monica Pearson, picked Galen Williams, a classmate of Combs’ from TriCities, as first runner-up. Williams performed a monologue written for the character Becker, from Wilson’s “Jitney.“
Pebblebrook High’s Meghann Lehmann, one of two white students in the final round, got honorable mention for her take on Vera, from “Seven Guitars.” Another interesting choice came from Pebblebrook’s Kimberly Wright, who played the character Boy Willie from “The Piano Lesson.”
Next month, all 10 plays of Wilson’s “Century Cycle” will be performed in repertory at a Kennedy Center festival, with Leon as artistic director. On April 7, students from three D.C.-area schools will compete in a Washington version of the monologue competition, which True Colors hopes to make a national project starting next year.
The three Atlanta finalists will will not compete in the D.C. pilot program, but they will perform their winning monologues in “showcase” style.
For more information about the Kennedy Center event, go to kennedy-center.org.
