"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice"

On Wednesday, January 24th, 2018, Chariho was pleased to hear the words of poet and playwright William Shakespeare echoed through the voices of the four members of the Shakespeare Club: Jasmine Lerner, Jessica LaFreniere, Laila DeMartino, and Avery Moody. At the annual Shakespeare Competition. they each recited one of Shakespeare’s monologues as well as one of his sonnets. Students were judged on several aspects of their performance. First, ability to play the part of their character for their monologue, portraying the character’s circumstances and mood through their tone as well as their emotional and physical depiction, was a very important focus for the judges. Confidence in the words that they were speaking was also another factor in the judging of this competition. Furthermore, the sonnet portion of the contest was more about the understanding of the words of Shakespeare as well as the performance of a piece without as much “characterization” as Shakespeare Club teacher, Ms. Laub, describes it. The judges of this event included Chariho Humanities Specialist Mrs. Hall, English teacher Ms. Burns, Social Studies teacher Ms. LaFountain, Library Media Specialist Ms. Skelton, as well as community member and Arts Pathway Liaison Ms. Capalbo. The recitations themselves were all unique from each other and all delivered on the amount of passion and effort that each student put into them.

First up was sophomore Jasmine Learner, reciting Blanche’s monologue from King John as well as Sonnet 90 with a passionate and clear voice. When asked why she chose to join the Shakespeare Club, Jasmine replied that she loved the language as well as the performance aspect itself. “There’s so much that you can do with it, so many interpretations that you can take on every sonnet, every monologue, it’s just so powerful and everything just means so much. There’s nothing that [Shakespeare’s] written that doesn’t mean something.” Jasmine took second place in the competition overall.

Next was junior Jessica LaFreniere with a monologue from The Taming of the Shrew based on the “taming of women” and Sonnet 146. Jessica delivered wonderfully in the performance, speaking with feeling and thought while conveying important messages about the treatment of others and one’s self. When asked why she chose her monologue, Jessica replied that she always liked to represent strong women in her recitations and she felt that Katherine, the original speaker of this monologue, was “definitely a strong woman who is not afraid to speak her mind.” Jessica took fourth place overall.

Third was freshman Laila DeMartino who delivered a fantastic Much Ado About Nothing monologue as well as Sonnet 20. She spoke of the views of a woman on the uselessness of men in the world through her monologue as well as the interesting views as a man on attraction through her sonnet. This was Laila’s first time performing in Shakespeare Club and would tell people thinking about joining that they should try it out. “You should definitely just go into it with an open mind because Mrs. Laub, who runs it, will work with you and she will make sure that you are ready and that you are comfortable.” Overall, Laila took third place in the competition.

Last was Avery Moody, a junior at Chariho High School who recited Jacques’ monologue from As You Like It as well as Sonnet 27. Avery gave the audience a lovely performance of the monologue, giving them quite a few laughs with his expressions and changes of pitch in his voice. Avery did this purposefully, saying that he has wanted to try out some comedy in his Shakespeare performance for some time, telling the audience that he wanted to “try out [his] hand at comedy, which was a complete 180 on what [he] did last year.” Conversely, Avery’s choice of sonnets was quite saddening, filled with his character’s thoughts of his exhaustion and hallucinations during his travels.

Moody was the overall winner of the Shakespeare competition and will be given the opportunity to perform against the other first-place winners “from high schools around the state - public and private - at the Providence Athenaeum on Sunday, February 25” according to Mrs. Laub.