As a student of Shakespeare, Herriman High School senior Abigayle Berbert was in awe of the professional performance of “Much Ado About Nothing” she saw at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City.

“It’s the most comedic show of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen—it is so funny,” she said. “Shakespeare can be so boring sometimes, but it was this love interest type show where they were like enemies-to-lovers, and they did it in a way that made all of us literally on the edge of our seats.”

Students from Mountain Ridge High School who saw the play were impressed with the way the actors projected their lines without needing microphones. They were also thrilled to watch the professional stage crews reset the stage.

“I got to watch the set change from “39 Steps” into the “Much Ado” set, which was really cool to see it happen on stage,” a student who works on stage crew at MRHS said. “The [MRHS] tech team was all kind of freaking out on how big that stage was—it goes 60 feet back and 100 feet wide—and they are able to move these, like, 3,000 pound sets with, like, four people.” 

Theater and choir students from Mountain Ridge and Herriman High Schools traveled to Cedar City Oct. 3-5 to learn from professionals through performances and skill-building workshops, and also to compete with students from 99 other schools from Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Idaho, and Wisconsin in the 48th Annual Shakespeare Competition in early October.

Students interpret the works of Shakespeare through performance in acting, dance/choreography, music and technical theater categories to earn awards and scholarships. More than 3,000 students attended this year’s competition, which is the largest scholastic Shakespeare competition in North America.

Schools compete in one of six divisions, determined by school-size.

Herriman took third place in three of the music competitions: Madrigal Division (large ensemble choir), Canzonetta Division (medium-sized choir) and Troubadour Division (with a solo performed by Elise Farmer.)

MRHS students competed in the Tech Olympics in eight categories testing backstage skills. They sorted director’s notes, built set pieces, tied knots and arranged stage lighting within a time limit. Two MRHS students placed first in their individual events: Matthew Estes in Lighting and Clark Fowler in Rigging.

MRHS’s ensemble team performed a comedy mash-up of scenes from “Much Ado About Nothing” set in a 1980s cafe. Other students performed duo/trio scenes and monologues from “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Tempest.”

HHS students performed scenes from “Macbeth,” “The Tempest,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Merchant of Venice.”

Adjudicators scored performers on acting and singing skills and interpretation of the pieces.

“The Shakespeare language can kind of be confusing,” Berbert said. “But what it’s talking about, whether it’s in different languages, or just hard to understand the English, you need to know, to show that emotion.”

She said, especially for the choral performances of Renaissance music, which has no dynamics and uses Old English, they had to figure out the meaning of the song before they could perform it.

HHS senior Drew Skillin said judges are also looking for expression and movement that matches the music.

“You’re putting on a show while you’re singing, and that’s why you need to connect to the music, so you can put on that emotion in that show,” he said. “The judges love connection. That’s the main part with the music in the Shakespeare Festival, is connecting—connecting with the people you’re singing with, the song, the judges, your director and all that.”

He said performing for audiences that know and love Shakespeare was different than singing for the school student body.

“It’s such a different experience performing down there at competition, where you know you’re surrounded by all these other people who just enjoy what you do, and everyone is just there for the arts,” he said.

For the theater and choir students who traveled to the competition, the social aspect was a highlight of the trip.

“The best part was definitely the people, for me,” one MRHS junior said. “The people that went down with us made it a wonderful experience.”

First-time attendee HHS junior Ashley Barnum said the trip was an opportunity to form friendships.

“You get to room together, and you get to go from place to place,” she said. “I feel like it’s just a really big opportunity to get to know people and to build those relationships that you can’t just get just from school.”

Students said that the annual event has a good atmosphere because students from other schools are kind to and supportive of each other.

“It’s just so different because we all have the same hobby, and we’re all just sharing our passion and what we love,” a MRHS student said. “Obviously everyone wants to bring home the trophy, but I think everyone just enjoys being in each other’s presence.” 

Many students compete in the Shakespeare competition all three years in high school to improve their skills and to have fun.

“The Shakespeare competition has a sort of feel about it where we’re all learning,” Berbert said. “We go to learn about the new things, and Shakespeare and the old Renaissance Era and things like that. But it’s really, definitely more so a connecting thing, where you go and you get to see other schools perform. I think that’s something magical, like the ‘magic air of Shakespeare,’ as people call it, just connects to everyone.” λ