By CoCo Harris
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced the winners of the local August Wilson Monologue Competition. This annual competition was held at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh.
The event also celebrated the life of Bill Nunn who died in 2008 and who was a champion for the local competition.
The inspiration for the competition was sparked by two of August Wilson’s closest living collaborators, Kenny Leon and Todd Kreidler. Both were in attendance at this culmination of the national competition as Michael Washington was donned the 1st place winner. Washington, an 11th grader at Pittsburgh CAPA performed as Vera from “Seven Guitars.”
In the competition, each student performs a 1-3 minute monologue of his or her choosing from one of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle and competes with other students first within their city before moving forward to the nationals.
There are currently nine cities sending high school students to the national competition including Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Dallas and Greensboro, N.C.