Hillcrest High drama students win national Shakespeare competition

Hillcrest High drama students have much ado about Shakespeare.

Fifty-three Hillcrest students recently won in every category at the 35th annual Utah Shakespeare Competition in October. The event is a national high school competition with more than 2,900 students competing from 109 schools.

It was Hillcrest students’ second straight win as the overall champion at the contest and their fifth straight win in the ensemble category. Hillcrest students placed first in sweepstakes, ensemble, Ray Jones & Barb Barrett duo/trio award and Ray Jones First Place Monologue Award. The group also earned a third place finish in monologue. The competition is hosted by the Utah Shakespeare Festival and Southern Utah University.

“Our ensemble got perfect scores so it’s really kind of cool,” theatre arts instructor Joshua Long said. “Our kids work really, really hard. They have grown to love Shakespeare. The competition is my favorite thing we do every year and the quality of work produced is amazing. It’s very inspiring and magical.”

Senior Malia Morley, who won the duo/trio award for “Henry VIII,” along with senior Eli Gerber and junior Cory Goates, knows that the Shakespeare competition will be one of the things she will miss most when she graduates this spring.

“It was exciting to be on top at the Shakespeare festival because we worked so hard and gave it our all; it’s such an amazing experience I’ll always remember,” Malia said. “Not often do you find 50 teens really focusing, wanting to give their best performance from the time they’re selected to being on stage. Every moment we weren’t in the theater, we were on a hill we call the ‘Hillcrest field,’ rehearsing. I’ll miss the late night rehearsals and the craziness of friends who are dedicated and willing to stay late to work on scenes until we have it right.”

Malia, Eli and Cory joined senior Grace Carlson, who won the monologue contest, for a scene from “Measure from Measure.” Third-place monologue finisher, senior Hailey Unice, joined that group to perform “King Henry VI part I,” which won the best ensemble award. Senior Bradley Mackay was named best actor in that ensemble.

“We worked hours to create the emotions and feelings together,” Bradley said. “We worked really well together first with rehearsing ‘Aida,’ then with Shakespeare and then we’d go home and work on our parts even more.”

Several students like Bradley and Malia were in the fall musical, “Aida,” which was in rehearsals simultaneously with the Shakespeare competition. Malia recalls that between the shows and her theater class, she’d sometimes portray four characters in one day.

The duo/trio and monologue winners, along with Bradley, were awarded trophies and $1,000 scholarships to SUU. The Hillcrest team also received a trophy.

“The students were supportive of each other and came together as a team,” Long said. “There were some long nights, but they were dedicated and remained focused. It paid off with their results and also with them personally knowing they worked hard and it paid off with their best performances.”