High school students from Wright, Shoshoni and Guernsey-Sunrise will compete in the Wyoming finals of the Poetry Out Loud recitation contest on Monday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m. at the Atlas Theatre in Cheyenne. The awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 8 a.m. in the State Capitol Rotunda. The events, sponsored by the Wyoming Arts Council, are free and open to the public.
Judges for the Nov. 17 competition are Liz Skrabacz, English instructor and honors coordinator at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne; Bob Berky, theatrical clown, actor and playwright from Jackson; and David Neary, actor and WAC board member from Lander. The students were judged on memorization, voice inflection, stage presence and other criteria.
The Wyoming winner will receive $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip (with a chaperone) to Washington, D.C., for the national finals on April 27-28, 2009. The state winner’s school will receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books. The runner-up will receive $100, with $200 for his or her school library.
At the national finals, winners will receive $50,000 total in scholarships and school stipends, with at least a $20,000 college scholarship for the Poetry Out Loud national champion.
The Poetry Out Loud national initiative is a partnership involving the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation and state arts agencies.
FMI: Contact the Wyoming Arts Council at 307-777-7742.
