On Thursday, Feb. 11, sophomores met in the theater for the annual school story slam. The winners from that competition were invited to compete in the school competition on Feb. 18.
This year, the theme was “Mischief.” According to librarian Nancy Sullivan, the themes are decided on by the PPS librarians and voted on by sophomores in their English class.
Five sophomores and a senior performed at the school-wide competition in mid-February. Sophomore Emmie Liu, who won the sophomore competition, also won the school competition. Liu, and the second place sophomore Mira Shah, went on to represent our school at the PPS story slam “Truth Be Told.” This event was Feb. 26 in the McDaniel library. Liu placed fourth.
Liu told a story about pulling a chair from under her grandmother as a kid. She paced around the stage and varied her voice, almost like a theatre production scene. She got the story idea from her mom.
“She was like, ‘Remember that one time you pulled the chair on your grandma?’” Liu said. “I was so young that it’s more of a retelling of what I did, versus my actual perspective.”
While Liu didn’t improve her score between competitions, she was confident she would score higher at the PPS slam by adding comedic complexity.
“I skipped a lot of my funny jokes [at the school competition],” she said.
Unlike the poetry slam, which has scoring based on a “judge’s gut feeling,” story slams are scored based on a set rubric and is “kind of more straightforward,” according to Sullivan.
Shah told a story about her “frenemy” who she got revenge against at a summer camp. Her performance also reminded me of a theatre one act, with dramatic use of tone and movement.
Third place was awarded to sophomore Hazel Gusick with a story about neighborhood revenge. She will be an alternate at the district competition, meaning she can only compete if one of the top two cannot attend. Gusick achieved second place in the sophomore competition.
Sophomores Ziggy LaFarge and Bee Naue also participated but missed the podium.
There was one senior at the school story slam: Tony Salinas-Simon. He spoke about challenges in recent years of his life, using symbolism to represent them as four swords in his chest. His interpretation of mischief was finding himself in a dark place in recent years.
“Throughout my whole life, I wasn’t a bad kid,” he said, “but at some point in my life, I did get myself into trouble, hanging out with the wrong crowd of people…and a lot of [other] things that just ruined my mentality.”
Salinas-Simon’s story took an almost poem-like format. He tried to balance the two types of writing so it could fit with the story slam.
“I know I made it a little bit of a poem, but I tried to tell more of a poem and story,” he said.
The story slam competition, which has been going on here for ten years, is part of the curriculum for sophomores and incorporates almost all general elements of English subject matter.
“The teacher-y reason [we have the slam] is that we have reading, writing, speaking and listening standards that we’re supposed to teach,” Sullivan said.
While the story slam is over for the year, you can look forward to the next month of Poetry Slam season, the twentieth year with in-person competition. The all-freshmen competition was on Mar. 4 during the SAT day. Show up to the school competition on Apr. 16, and cheer on our school winner at the all-city competition, Verselandia, on Apr. 30 at Arlene Schnitzer concert hall.
