Gallery • 29 Photos

Kade Kaiser

Reader's Theater performs "Eulogy to My Heart" written and directed by Grant Freeman. Actors are Fiona Calcara, Clara Vavricek, Lexi Liu, Natalee Jacobson, Claire Thuerauf, Beck Oesterle, Ellah Shook, Emery Willems, Hannah Jones, and Lyn Bauer.

The Mount Vernon High School large group speech team will travel to Iowa State University in Ames on Feb. 21 to compete at All-State Speech. The competition starts at 8 a.m and lasts nearly all day. After earning many top ratings at state, the team qualified eight events, and is performing four events: Choral Reading, Ensemble Acting “We Can Be Heroes,” Readers Theater Shakespeare and Ensemble Acting “When the Cubs Win it All.” Coach Grant Freeman calls it a “record-breaking year” with 41 students attending from Mount Vernon.

One of the events, Choral Reading, is perfoming a piece titled “Eulogy to My Heart” which tells the true story about a woman whose husband died after being hit by a drunk driver. The piece uses the woman’s own poetry about her grief, love, and memories, which speech coach Grant Freeman helped turn into a performance. 

Junior Natelee Jacobson, who has been on the speech team for three years, qualified for All-State for the first time this season with the Choral Reading group. She said the group was heavily focused on improving after districts. 

One of the hardest parts of performing “Eulogy to My Heart” this piece was being able to perform the deep emotions that the piece contains. “ Having to sell genuine emotions throughout the piece is challenging,” Jacoboson said. “Since it was a true event, it makes us feel more of that emotion, so it can be difficult to perform while thinking about the story,” 

Even so, the group as a whole loves performing this piece and sharing such a meaningful message. “My favorite part is getting to tell the story,” Jacobson said. “It really makes you think about how remembering the good times you had with people is what you have in the end.”

Sophomore Emery Williams, who is in her second year of speech, is also attending All-State for the first time. She really loves being able to perform “Eulogy to My Heart” the piece they are doing and Choral Reading as a whole. 

“Choral Reading is unique because it is like a choir,” Williams said. “We all have to speak together, and if one person sticks out it sounds off. We also have certain movements that have to be in sync.”

The group has worked very hard in improving their performance and working together as a team, they have practiced nearly every Sunday for two hours and have worked hard to move through the challenges together.  “I feel like we have all gotten our own meaning out of the piece, which helps us enhance our performance,” Williams said. 

Both students said they feel nervous but very excited heading into the weekend. Other members performing “Eulogy to My Heart” are Fiona Calcara, Clara Vavricek, Lexi Liu, Claire Thuerauf, Beck Oesterle, Ellah Shook, Hannah Jones, and Lyn Bauer They are very grateful to be able to perform and represent Mount Vernon at the state level against other very talented teams. And they are very excited to celebrate what they have all put so much work into. 

Bauer, a junior, in “Eulogy to My Heart” also was invited to perform at All State in the Ensemble Acting group with “When the Cubs Win It All,” written by Coach Freeman

Freeman said that he wrote “When the Cubs Win It All” in the aftermath of his stepfather Paul’s death,”giving him the ending in fiction he couldn’t get in real life.” Freeman wrote in a Facebook post that “proud isn’t a big enough word to describe this feeling.” He explained, “The show was written for Paul, my mother Abbi Swanson, and my friend Scott Andrew Weber. Seniors Ellah

Shook and Owen Francois are three-time All Staters. They worked together in the Reader’s Theater piece “Eva’s Evolution,” and as coaches of freshmen in Reader’s Theatre with “The Adventures of Mouse Deer.” Francois also qualified in his Ensemble Acting group “Nova Scotia” and Shook with “Eulogy to My Heart.”

PERFORMING
Ensemble Acting – Mount Vernon Varsity – We Can Be Heroes (Coached by Trevor Baty)
Ensemble Acting – Mount Vernon Varsity – When the Cubs Win It All (Coached/Written by Grant Freeman)
Choral Reading – Mount Vernon Varsity – Eulogy to My Heart (Coached/Written by Grant Freeman)
One Act – Mount Vernon 9th – RSC Shakespeare (Coached by Grant Freeman)
NON PERFORMING
Ensemble Acting – Mount Vernon Varsity – Nova Scotia (Coached/Written by Grant Freeman)
Reader’s Theatre – Mount Vernon Varsity – Eva’s Evolution (Coached/Written by Amy White)
Reader’s Theatre – Mount Vernon 9th – The Adventures of Mouse Deer (Coached by Ellah Shook and Owen Francois)
Group Improv – Mount Vernon Varsity – Team Errington/Gehrke/Turner (Coached by Trevor Baty)

State Results: