LOS ANGELES — When it comes to dramatizing race on stage, few articulate the African-American experience better than playwright August Wilson and Center Theatre Group is hosting the regional finals of the August Wilson Monologue Competition.

Actress Kara Royster made it to the finals years ago as a high school senior and is now co-hosting this year’s event.

“It is such an honor and a pleasure to be on this stage again and now as a host,” announces co-host Kara Royster from the stage at the Mark Taper Forum.

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While pursuing acting as a student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Kara remembers her first experience.

“The first time that I competed at the Mark Taper, the August Wilson Monologue Competition, I was so nervous,” said Royster. “I was walking up here, I was trying to get some breathing exercises in, but I was just filled with excitement and ready to go.”

From South Florida, Kara convinced her parents to move to LA when she was 15 to fulfill her dreams of becoming an actress and has worked on shows like K.C. Undercover and Pretty Little Liars, and is currently recurring on CBS’s God Friended Me. She credits her experience competing in the August Wilson Monologue Competition for building her confidence in the audition room.

“Being part of a competition like this, being part of this journey of learning about August Wilson,  learning about myself, learning about other people and becoming an ensemble, throwing yourself into something that you thought might be too difficult or not in your wheelhouse, just it really helped me to learn to open up,” said Royster.

 

 

Kara’s been a judge twice and is now co-hosting with Rhenzy Feliz, another alumni of the program. He’s the star of Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ on Hulu. Also a finalist of the competition, Rhenzy thinks of the monologue as an opportunity to step out of himself and exist as another.

“The monologue is sort of part of an extended scene and so to me it's about getting into the life and into the mind of this character,” said actor Rhenzy Feliz. “You feel at home, you feel like you are living in a real moment as this human being and saying these words they're saying and that's where the magic for me is, it's really finding a way to live in that moment as this character.”

The 9th consecutive year Center Theatre Group has hosted this competition, 2 winners will be selected out of 12 students to go to New York for a chance to perform in the national finals.  

“Theatre and the arts in general was such a big part of growing up,” said Royster. “It allowed me to learn about communities that I was not a part of. It was my opportunity to explore different characters and themes and the little stories and the little tidbits that I was able to get from August Wilson's pieces, I carry with me everyday.”

Students! Break a leg!