The 32nd annual Shakespeare Competition for Greenwich, Stamford and other Connecticut high school students will be held at 3 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in the Cole Auditorium at Greenwich Library. The competition, which is free and open to the public, is jointly sponsored by the Greenwich Branch of the English-Speaking Union, the Smith College Club of Greenwich-Stamford and The Friends of the Greenwich Library. Competition co-chairs are Anne Hall Elser of the ESU and Caterina Kavanagh of the Smith College Club.
The competition is open to students in grades 9-12 from public, independent and parochial high schools. Students are selected by their schools in preliminary competition for advancement to the Branch Competition. Participants are required to perform from memory a monologue of no more than 20 lines from one of Shakespeare’s plays and to recite a sonnet by Shakespeare.
The first-prize winner on March 9 will advance to the ESU’s National Shakespeare Competition scheduled for May 1-3, at Lincoln Center in New York City. First prize for the winner of the National Shakespeare Competition is a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’s Young Actors Summer School in London, all expenses paid.
Three noted personalities in the theatre world will be judging the Greenwich Branch Competition: Mark Lamos, Joanna Gleason and Chris Sarandon.
Westport Country Playhouse Artistic Director Mark Lamos has directed many plays at the Playhouse since 2008, winning the 2013 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for his direction of The Dining Room. His extensive New York credits include Our Country’s Good and Edward Albee’s Seascape, for which he received Tony Award nominations. Shakespeare directing credits on Broadway and Off-Broadway include Cymbeline at Lincoln Center Theater, Measure for Measure at LCT for which he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, and As You Like It for The Public Theater in Central Park. Lamos is former artistic director of Hartford Stage (1980-1997), where he directed 14 of Shakespeare’s plays during his tenure, including Romeo and Juliet with Calista Flockhart, Hamlet and Richard III with Richard Thomas, and Pericles with Angela Bassett. In 1989, he accepted the regional theater Tony Award for Hartford Stage’s body of work. Under Lamos’ direction, PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center telecast of Madama Butterfly won a 2008 Emmy Award for New York City Opera. He was awarded the Connecticut Medal for the Arts as well as honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, University of Hartford, and Trinity College.
Joanna Gleason has taught acting, as well as acting for the musical theatre, for over thirty years, and she is currently with the newly minted musical theatre school within The Manhattan School of Music. Upcoming classes are at SUNY Purchase and The Circle in the Square Theatre School. She has taught at Stella Adler, held classes for Primary Stages, TRU, Occidental College, and DeSales University among many others.
Gleason won a Tony for Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, as leading actress in a musical. She has three Drama Desks, and two Outer Critics’ nominations and wins. There were Tony nominations for Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels and Joe Egg on Broadway. Off-Broadway includes shows for The Public Theatre, The Roundabout and Manhattan Theatre Club. Film work includes Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Boogie Nights, Last Vegas and The Skeleton Twins. She has appeared on television in The Affair, West Wing, The Newsroom, Friends, Bette, Murphy Brown, Blue Bloods and many other shows. She lives on Tiny Farm with Chris Sarandon. She can tango.
Chris Sarandon has appeared on Broadway in The Rothschilds, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Nick and Nora, The Light in the Piazza and Cyrano de Bergerac. He has also appeared frequently Off-Broadway, most recently in Through a Glass Darkly and at Lincoln Center 3’s highly acclaimed Preludes. He made his film debut as Al Pacino’s confused lover in Dog Day Afternoon, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Other films include Protocol, Just Cause, Fright Night, Child’s Play, The Princess Bride, Loggerheads, and most recently I Smile Back. Also, Sarandon was tapped by creator Tim Burton and director Henry Sellick to be the speaking voice of the lead character Jack Skellington in the animation classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.
On TV Sarandon has starred in the dual roles of Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of A Tale of Two Cities, as well as Hallmark’s You Can’t Go Home Again. He has appeared as a recurring guest star on the television series The Practice, Chicago Hope, ER, Felicity, Stark Raving Mad, Judging Amy, and as a regular on the short-lived series The Court. Also, he has played Abraham Lincoln in the acclaimed PBS mini-series, God in America, and the crusty Judge Howard Matchick on The Good Wife. Sarandon and his wife, actress/director/writer Joanna Gleason, have four children and three grandchildren together.
