Sarah Spalding felt certain that she had blown it, that she had literally choked away her chance at winning the Hawaii qualifier for the English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition.
Spalding, a senior at Mid-Pacific Institute, had spent countless hours preparing for her performance as Rosalind in a scene from "As You Like It," yet in the middle of her dramatic monologue, her throat caught.
"I thought it was super obvious," Spalding says. "I was so nervous. I was sweating and hyperventilating. I thought I was going to start crying."
Instead, she soldiered through the performance, her countenance betraying none of the turmoil within. And what seemed super obvious to Spalding seemed not to have registered in the ears of the judges.
At the end of the competition, Spalding, who had placed second to Ari Dalbert of Punahou the year before, waited with head still spinning as the names of the finalists were read. When she was announced as the winner, she wasn’t even sure that she had heard correctly.
"My heart skipped 20 beats, I died a little and then resuscitated," she says, laughing. "It was very over-stimulating."
You will forgive young Spalding’s exuberance. Her flair for the dramatic is, after all, one of her most endearing traits.
Spalding said her love of the stage began when she participated in school plays while attending St. Andrew’s Priory. Her theatrical studies began in earnest when she transferred to MPI and came under the tutelage of John Wat.
"Without him I couldn’t have done any of this," Spalding said. "He’s an incredible teacher."
Spalding’s keen comedic chops served her well in her role as Rizzo in the MPI production of "Grease" and in her performance as Viola from "Twelfth Night" in last year’s Shakespeare competition. Yet, Spalding says she prefers tragedies to comedies.
"They touch people at a different level," she says. "There’s just something deeper that happens."
Spalding will represent the ESU Hawaii area at the national competition April 27 at Lincoln Center in New York. The all-expenses-paid trip also includes two days of educational and cultural activities, including an acting workshop at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a visit to the William Shakespeare statue in Central Park.
The other finalists in the local competition were Alisa Boland of ‘Iolani School and Nicholas Howe from Mililani High School, who placed second and third, respectively.
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Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
