Welcome to the 2025 ESU National Shakespeare Competition!

We are pleased to announce the kick-off of the ESU’s 42nd Annual National Shakespeare Competition (NSC)! Schools in our region may enter now, giving students the opportunity to compete in the NSC Desert Branch Competition this winter.  The winner of the Branch Competition will travel to NYC for a weekend of exciting events culminating in the National Finals at Lincoln Center in April 2025!  

The Desert/Palm Springs Branch Competition will take place on 2/21/2025 at 10:00 am at 
Palm Springs High School
Richards Center for the Arts

Deadline for schools to register: 1/17/2025

Deadline to submit School Winner Forms: 2/13/2025

PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Desert Shakespeare Competition

The ESU National Shakespeare Competition is a performance-based education program. High school students develop analytical and communication skills by performing Shakespeare at the school, community, and national levels. Since 1983 more than 425,000 students have brought the timeless works of Shakespeare to life. 

The Competition helps students develop speaking and critical-thinking skills while they explore the beauty of the language and the timeless themes in Shakespeare’s works. By preparing a monologue and sonnet for public presentation, students bring Shakespeare to life in their own way and learn to express his works with understanding, clarity, and feeling. Approximately 600 teachers and 3,500 students in nearly 45 ESU branches participate each year.  Students perform and recite Shakespeare monologues and sonnets in three qualifying stages: school, branch, and National levels.

If you are a Theatre, English, Forensics teacher, or administer a home school program, we encourage you to enter to give your students an opportunity to participate in this exciting competition. If you are an interested high school student, please alert your teachers to this valuable program. 

2025 Prizes Include:

  • 1st place: British American Drama Academy Mid-Summer Conservatory Program in Oxford, London
  • 2nd place: American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp in Staunton, VA
  • 3rd place: $1000

Program Details
Everything You Need to Know to Get Started

Documents & Forms

All materials including the online school participation form, teacher and student handbooks, and packets of monologues and sonnets are located here.

Branch Contact

Contact Desert Branch Competition Coordinator Allison Boylan for questions: aboylan@psusd.us