Dominique Marshall '18 Wins State Shakespeare Competition

 

To reach this point, Dom first competed against her peers at Rivers, memorized and performed a monologue from one of Shakespeare’s plays. Then she moved on to the regional level where she needed to perform a monologue and a sonnet to qualify for the state competition. At the state level, the remaining students need to perform the monologue and sonnet, but are also assigned a “cold read” of a monologue that they must perform after just 15 minutes of preparation.

 

When all was said and done, Dom stood alone as the best in Massachusetts.

 

“The whole experience has been so much fun and I am really pumped to go to New York,” Dom said. “Getting to perform on a stage like Lincoln Center is beyond anything I have imagined this point in my acting career, so this will be a whole new experience that could open even more opportunities for me going forward.”

 

Dominique is the first Rivers student to move on to the national level of the competition since Miles Jacoby ’07 reached the finals in 2007. Miles has since gone on to pursue a career in theater and made his Broadway debut in the 2014 Broadway and National Tour of The Book of Mormon.

 

Shakespeare is a staple in the English curriculum at Rivers, which gives students a foundation with his work that lends itself to success in this competition.

 

“Through my classes, I was able to gain an understanding of how Shakespeare uses language and changes words to fit the tempo he is trying to create,” Dom said. “In my ninth grade English class we read Romeo & Juliet and had to decipher every line of it and think about how much meaning was behind the language he was using. From Middle School, through that class, to The Comedy of Errors this fall, I’ve become very comfortable with Shakespeare.”

 

English teacher Juliet Bailey has been directing the Rivers level of the competition for several years now and found that Dominique’s ability to inhabit the characters in what proved to be three very different selections really stood out to those judging the competition.

 

“Dominique is a very physical actor and played the comedy of her monologue – Viola’s monologue from Twelfth Night – and the seriousness of her sonnet so well that she really got the attention of the judges,” Ms. Bailey said. “When it came time for her cold read, she was able to draw on her experience with the material and she really nailed it.”

 

The National Shakespeare Competition finals will take place on May 1, 2017, at Lincoln Center in New York City.