It was a delightful experience this week to watch our Shakespeare Slam finalists perform monologues and duologues from Shakespeare’s works to their peers and teachers.
Performing extracts from Shakespeare’s plays allowed the boys to explore the complex characters and beautiful prose, find their voices and gain confidence in expressing the nuances of the Bard’s words for an audience.
After exciting class heats, in which every boy performed for the opportunity to represent their class, the class winners came together to compete in the finals – held in three locations simultaneously.
The judges marked the boys’ performances, considering body language, eye contact and stage presence. Clarity, enunciation and intonation, together with the emotion, tempo, and characterisation the boys incorporated into their speeches, were also crucial.
As always, the performances were superb, and the judges faced a real challenge in selecting the winners.
Miss Bygraves commented, “The standard was incredibly high this year, and it was a very close competition to judge. All the boys performed well, adding strong emotion, and each gave a passionate performance. Many boys had learnt lengthy monologues and carefully considered their stage presence and how to portray their character to an audience. A huge well done to all involved!”
Congratulations go to every boy for taking part and to this year’s winners, who were:
- Y3 Henry Ruthven-Murray
- Y4 Lincoln Langley
- Y5 Joseph Costin
- Y6 Oscar Goodeve
- Y7 Leo Butler
- Y8 Cayo Sinclair
