Category Archives: Speaking of Shakespeare Lecture

March 2: Shakespeare Sampler (Free Talk/Performance)

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Please join us for our Speaking of Shakespeare lecture series at the Mission Valley Library from 12:30-2:00pm.  It’s free and open to the public.

Special guests include two ESU finalists, Carson McCalley and Laura Parker

March 2nd will be called the “Shakespeare Sampler” because we will have a series of performances to represent the programs we will bring you throughout 2013.  We are working on bringing you fresh student talent from the English Speaking Union Shakespeare monologue competition plus students preparing for our annual student festival.  We plan to have actors performing sonnets and brief Shakespeare scenes and to give you a summary of some of our exciting plans for the year.

Support the society and get a bit of free theatre by coming out to the event.  We promise you new Shakespearean thrills.

Poetry Winners Announced

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The SDSS is proud to announced the winners for our first writing contest.  You may remember that we announced a contest associated with the SDSS Student Festival on April 28th.  Apparently poetry was popular because that’s what all our entries were!  In fact, one teacher (whom we asked to speak at the lecture on Saturday) even assigned it to her class and we had ten entries just from that school.

At the Speaking of Shakespeare lecture on May 19th, we celebrated the success of the Student Shakespeare Festival with photos and videos.  We also had teacher Heidi Schlotfeldt from Spencer Valley School come out to speak, about the history of the one-room school house in Julian where she teaches and also her experience with the Student Festival.  Some of her students were on hand to perform a piece from their Festival scene (Macbeth) as well.

Then we really surprised the Spencer Valley students when we announced that our poetry contest winner was from their school.

Ciera Baker, Grand Prize Winner for her Sonnet

Grand Prize Winner:
Ciera Baker, 7th Grade

Honorable Mentions:

  • Isabelle Swift, 6th Grade
  • Dora Pierce, 4th Grade

Congratulations to our poetry winners!  Good work!

The SDSS would like to thank our partners for their help in this contest.

The Old Globe - for their donation of tickets to the Summer Shakespeare Festival – our Grand Prize -2 tickets for each of the three preview nights for the productions of the Summer Festival!

plus the donation of a set of posters of Henry VIII, which we gave to each participant in the contest, in addition to a certificate thanking them for entering.

The Old Globe has also generously donated 5 sets of tickets – one set of tickets for each teacher whose scene won best of the stage at the Festival.  We’ll be mailing those out next week!  Each winning teacher will get 2 tickets to each of the three preview nights for the Summer Festival at the Old Globe.

Write Out Loud - for being judges in the writing contest and their donation of tickets to one of their events (prizes for the Honorable Mentions)

San Diego Writer’s Ink – for participating in the judging.  Thank you to Executive Director, Kelli Wescott.

Outside the Lens – for agreeing to judge in the photography contest (even though, in the end, we had no entries other than poetry)