Long Wharf Theatre, in collaboration with Yale Repertory Theatre, is hosting the New Haven Regional August Wilson Monologue Competition.

Schools throughout the New Haven area will compete to send two winners on an all-expense paid trip to the National Competition in New York City, where they will perform on a Broadway stage, see a Broadway play and have a chance to win college scholarships. 

The regional competition will be held March 9 at Long Wharf Theatre. The national competition will take place May 7 in New York City at the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway.

The National August Wilson Monologue Competition is an arts education program for high schools students in grades 9-12. It is an eight-week unit that introduces a new generation to the work of August Wilson.

Madelyn Newman, Long Wharf Theatre's director of education, said they are hoping to grow the program each year to becom a statewide initiative. 

Students will explore Wilson’s American Century Cycle with support from Long Wharf Theatre and Yale Rep teaching artists once a week. This series of 10 plays, two of which received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, are each set in a different decade, depicting some of the most comprehensive and poetic narratives of the African-American experience in the 20th century in all of literature.

At the plays’ core are soaring, lyrical monologues that are modern, spoken word arias, taking on song, laughter, hope and pain.  Classrooms will study at least one of Wilson’s plays, and students will choose a monologue from one of the play’s characters. The goal of the competition is to inspire high school students to empower themselves and find their voices through theatre. 

This national program is produced in collaboration between Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre and Jujamcyn Theatre.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford helped establish Wilson as a major voice in American theater, and Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven is renowned for staging six world premieres of his work. 

For more information, visit longwharf.org/august-wilson-monologue-competition or call (203) 772-8272.