How Playwright August Wilson Can Change NYC Teenagers’ LivesA participant in the 2024 August Wilson New Voices finals. Photo by Chazz Rolle.How Playwright August Wilson Can Change NYC Teenagers’ Lives

TDF and Manhattan Theatre Club are partnering on the regional August Wilson New Voices competition in NYC. Here’s how high schoolers can participate and vie for prizes

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For Christian Helem, participating in the August Wilson Monologue Competition changed the trajectory of his life. “I was a junior at The Chicago High School for the Arts and I competed with the Memphis monologue from Two Trains Running,” he recalls. “It was my introduction to August Wilson’s work and that became the monologue I used for college auditions. On top of that, because I won the competition in Chicago, I received a partial scholarship to the School of Theatre and Music at University of Illinois, Chicago.” Helem was so inspired by the August Wilson Monologue Competition, he returned as a staffer, eventually serving as the Competition Director of the Chicago hub from 2015 to 2023.

The winner of a multitude of honors, including one Tony Award and two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson is celebrated for his American Century Cycle: ten plays, each set in a different decade, depicting the African-American experience throughout the 20th century. Although he died in 2005, Wilson’s work continues to resonate. This season, multiple theatres in Baltimore are collaborating to mount all ten plays in chronological order, and Denzel Washington is in the process of producing (and sometimes starring) in the entire cycle on screen.

Helem believes all students will be enriched by the power and poetry of August Wilson’s words, even if they aren’t actors. The competition, which was renamed August Wilson New Voices in 2021, is an excellent way to expose high schoolers to his oeuvre. “When people think of classic plays, they think of Shakespeare and Molière, but they should also be thinking of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson,” Helem says. “It’s really important that students read a wide variety of writers and also that Black students see themselves represented on stage.”

For the 2025 edition of August Wilson New Voices, TDF is partnering with Manhattan Theatre Club for the regional competition in New York City. All local high school students ages 19 or younger are eligible to participate. This program is free—there is no cost to compete. Preliminary Auditions are scheduled for Saturday, February 1, 2025. There are two ways to participate:

• Attend an August Wilson Day of Learning on either Saturday, December 7, 2024 or Sunday, December 15, 2024 to gain new performance skills and learn about August Wilson’s life and work; an optional one-on-one monologue coaching session on January 11, 2025 is also available. (Registration deadline is November 14, 2024.)
  
  
• Select an approved monologue and prepare independently for the Preliminary Auditions. (Registration deadline is December 13, 2024.)

You can learn more about August Wilson New Voices by attending an open house in person on Saturday, November 9 or via Zoom on Monday, November 11. The top three finalists will receive cash prizes, and two winners will go on to compete at nationals in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 26 to 29, 2025, all expenses paid. Click here to register for these events.

“I got into it because it was a way to pay tribute to August every year and all the things that he did for me,” explains Sanders, who also serves as the Associate Director of the Drama Division at Juilliard. “When I was an undergrad at Howard University, I was inspired by Wilson’s The Ground on Which I Stand,” the playwright’s 1996 speech calling for African-American artists to take control of their cultural identity in the theatre industry. “I was going to school to be an actor, and then I read that and thought, you know what? This is the charge. This is the thing that I really want to do, to be a part of exposing the work of African Americans in the diaspora on a national platform.”

As Sanders embarked on his journey, he connected with Wilson and became involved in the development of his last two plays: Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf. “I got a chance to see how he worked,” Sanders says. “It was a fundamental grounding for me as an artist.”

Sanders believes today’s high schoolers will be as galvanized by Wilson’s work as he was in his youth. One of the main goals of the competition is for “August to be taught in every school in the nation,” Sanders says. “How do we get August to be part of the high school curriculum, not just in English, not just in drama, but in social studies and civics, too?”

When Sanders says all NYC high schoolers, he means it. “We want everybody to be a part of it: all races, all creeds, all genders,” he affirms. “It doesn’t matter if you’re not African American. One of the most powerful performances we’ve had was a Latina student who was Deaf. It’s truly open to all high school students.”

While some previous competitors have gone on to acting glory—past finalists include Dear Evan Hansen‘s Kristolyn Lloyd, Hamilton‘s Jasmine Cephas Jones and two-time Tony nominee Jeremy Pope—Sanders says it’s not about winning or even performing.

Learn more about how to participate in August Wilson New Voices in NYC on Manhattan Theatre Club’s website.