Ben Haile retains the title of BHS National Shakespeare Competition champion.

Brentwood Home Page news reports
Brentwood High School held its local 2011 National Shakespeare Competition Jan. 27 at Brentwood High School. 

BHS senior Ben Haile won the competition for the second time. Judges included Jean Hoogewind, a senior English teacher, a speech teacher, and an actor with many roles at the Town Centre Theatre;  Jean Kleine-Kracht, senior Honors English teacher , and Lee Huddleston senior AP English teacher Lee Huddleston, who organized the BHS entry and competition.

Brown	Baldwin

The contest, open to all 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students, is judged on three criteria: artistic skill, understanding the material and communication with the audience.   Anna Brown placed second with Aja Baldwin coming in third. Also competing were Susan Shin and Eric Donahue.

Haile performed a monologue from Love’s Labour’s Lost, one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies.  He now moves on to the Regional Competition to be held in April at Harpeth Hall. He will perform the monologue again as well as a sonnet that is complementary in some way to the monologue.

The regional competition is organized by Dr. Ann Cook. For 20 years, Cook was an English professor at Vanderbilt University and former executive director of the Shakespeare Association of America. She now is vice-president and life trustee of the Shakespeare Birthday Trust, lecturer and authority on performance-based teaching.

The winner of the regional competition will advance to the nationals in New York City with an all expenses paid weekend to perform for the chance to win a summer in London studying Shakespeare.