Photo Flash: Shaila Essley Takes 1st Place in CTG's 2015 August Wilson Monologue Competition

From a field of 12 local high school students, Shaila Essley, Philip Patrick Bucknor and Wayne R. Mackins-Harris have been selected to represent Los Angeles in the August Wilson Monologue Competition (AWMC) national finals. Contestants this year featured high school students from four Southern California cities, who performed in the regional finals at the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, Monday night, March 2, 2015. Scroll down for photos from the competition!

CTG is pleased to announce that Shaila Essley of Chino Hills placed first in the competition, earning a $500 scholarship; Philip Patrick Bucknor of Los Angeles took second place, with a $400 scholarship; and Wayne R. Mackins-Harris of Los Angeles took third place and a $300 scholarship. Both Essley and Bucknor will compete in the national finals at the August Wilson Theatre in New York City on May 4, and Mackins-Harris will perform and also serve as an alternate at the finals.

Every student participating in this competition performed a monologue from playwright August Wilson's 10-play Century Cycle, an epic dramatization of the African-American experience in the 20th century.

Judges of the Los Angeles regional finals were professional actors and entertainment professionals with special interest in the works of August Wilson, including the Tony Award- nominated actress Kimberleigh Aarn (August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" on Broadway), Tony Award-nominated Founder and Artistic Director of Ebony Repertory Theatre Wren Brown, actor and faculty member of the USC School of Dramatic Arts Anita Dashiell-Sparks and stage and screen actors Robert Gossett (recently seen in "The Royale" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre) and William Allen Young (best known for his role as Frank Mitchell on "Moesha"). Master of Ceremonies was the award-winning broadcast journalist and CBS 2's co-anchor of the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. news, Pat Harvey.

With the support of the CTG Affiliates, this is the fourth consecutive year that CTG hosted the Southern California component of the national monologue competition. The program is designed to inspire and educate Los Angeles youth through the work of August Wilson.

The program kicked off with a preliminary round featuring more than 150 students, and the 12 regional finalists were selected during a semi-final round held on December 13. The program progressed with training and rehearsal sessions (provided by CTG) throughout January and February for each of the 12 regional finalists.

CTG has had a long relationship with the work of August Wilson, presenting eight of his plays. In addition to "Jitney," "King Hedley II" (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), "Gem of the Ocean" (world premiere production), "Radio Golf" (world premiere production) and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at the Mark Taper Forum, CTG presented the Tony Award-nominated "Seven Guitars" at the Ahmanson Theatre and "Two Trains Running" and "The Piano Lesson" (1990 Pulitzer Prize) at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood.

For more about the August Wilson Program at Center Theatre Group, visit CenterTheatreGroup.org/AugustWilson.

Photo Credit: Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging