On Monday, November 13, seven WCS students made their way to Chamberlain to participate in the Region Oral Interpretation Contest, where the team took 1st place! Jennifer Barnett, Trenton Rolston, Jackson Rolston, Presley Slaba, Macee Stimpson, Jessica Barnett, and Taya Stone have practiced, worked hard, and performed their hearts out for the last couple of months preparing for Monday, as they attempted to vie their way to the state competition.

While all our students performed top-tier performances, Reader’s Theatre, Jackson Rolston, Jennifer Barnett, and Presley Slaba will compete at the state competition on December 1st and 2nd in Harrisburg, with Jessica Barnett as an alternate.

Jennifer Barnett, who placed 1st in Poetry, performed a medley of poems about life and death by Joe Brainard, Walt Whitman, Emilia Ruth, and Edmund Vance Cook. The poems chosen make the audience think about how we live every single day and how we should make each of those days count.

Jackson Rolston performed two sets, humor and non-original (non-o). In both pieces, Jackson placed 1st! Jackson chose to use his older brother as inspiration in his non-o piece, where he takes Sean Stephenson’s speech “The Prison of your Mind” and does a wonderful rendition for his audience. The speech talks about regardless of disabilities or obstacles that one faces, one must persevere on and not be a victim to the prison of their own mind. The humor piece chosen was a play off Hansel and Gretel, talking about two friends who get lost in the woods, find a gingerbread house, and meet a witch who tries to make supper out of the friends. Unfortunately, due to a series of food allergies and unfortunate events, the witch finds the friends to be too much to make it worth her time to fatten them up for a meal.

Presley Slaba performed a storytelling piece, “Verity” by Colleen Hoover. This piece takes Hoover’s book and condenses the story into a 5 minute piece, narrating the struggles an author (Lowen) goes through as she works on another author (Verity)’s writing pieces, after the original author paralyzed in a car accident. Lowen stays at Verity’s house with her family to work on the novel, and discovers horrifying manuscripts from Verity, detailing how she killed her own children, from drowning, a peanut allergy, and other attempts at murder. A surprise twist at the ends reveals that things aren’t always as they seem.

Jessica Barnett’s serious piece this year is “The Elephant Man”, an interpretation of the life of Joseph “John” Merrick. Merrick was born with a congenital disorder, which led his life to be a sideshow display. Merrick was found by Dr. Treves, who saved Merrick from the sideshow life. Dr. Treves finds the true Merrick beneath the hard, disfigured exterior, and treats him like a real human, for the first time in his life, Merrick feels safe.

Reader’s Theatre also punched their ticket to the state competition! Reader’s Theatre this year consists of Trenton Rolston, Macee Stimpson, Taya Stone, Jackson Rolston, and Presley Slaba. Their selected piece is “Bobby Wilson Can Eat His Own Face,” a comedy piece where Bobby (J. Rolston) fights with his sister (Stone) often to the dismay of their mother (Stimpson). Bobby, fed up with his life and his crazy dad (T. Rolston) decides to run away and join the circus. However, he finds out that the circus, under the direction of the money-hungry ringleader (Slaba), is full of mutated people, potentially from the nuclear waste facility nearby. After realizing this, Bobby decides he better just go home…and send his demented sister off to the circus instead.

Coaches Renbarger and Fischer have been very pleased this year with our Oral Interp team! We have had several new faces join OI and have been working hard throughout the season. While we can only take a limited amount of performances to the regional level, these kids make it hard to decide! Congratulations on a great season, OI’ers and we can’t wait to see the state performances!