For the second year in a row, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater has earned first place in a national monologue competition.
The True Colors Theatre Next Narrative Monologue Competition is a national program for high school students that gives them the opportunity to deliver contemporary monologues from Black playwrights.
Milwaukee Rep is one of nine major cities participating in this program and offers free workshops across the city to prepare students in selecting and rehearsing the monologue of their choice.
The two students who win at Milwaukee Rep’s regional competition win cash prizes and the opportunity to represent Milwaukee on an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to compete at the National Finals.
Silver Anderson, a student at Golda Meir High School, is a Milwaukee Rep regional finalist who recently won first place in the 2025 Next Narrative Monologue Competition National Finals in New York City. Anderson performed the monologue Shame by Cheryl West and took home a $3,000 scholarship prize.
Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez spoke with Anderson and James Carrington, Milwaukee Rep’s associate director of engagement and one of Anderson’s monologue coaches, to learn about the monologue competition.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Editor’s note: A warning to our listeners, at the end of this conversation, there is a monologue reading that may be upsetting for some as it includes offensive language and references to self-harm.
Can you explain what the Next Narrative Monologue Competition is and what role Milwaukee Rep plays in preparing students for it?
James Carrington: So the Next Narrative Monologue Competition was started by True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, about five years ago. True Colors looked at the landscape of theater and said there are not enough, or nearly any, monologues or works by contemporary Black playwrights. So [True Colors Theatre Company] commissioned a compendium of brand-new contemporary monologues from African American playwrights, and any teenager across the country can participate.
So no matter what your race is, if you're in high school, you can use one of these monologues to enter the competition. And these monologues range from topics of class, ableism, gender identity politics, social and emotional well-being — any topic, you name it, there's a monologue about it. And Milwaukee Rep is one of the nine regional partners across the country, and we've been doing it since its inception about four years ago. Next year will be the fifth year. So we enter the competition, and every city is a little bit different — they run their auditions a little bit differently — but we have our top 10 from our audition process, and then we work with them for about five weeks. Then at our semi-finals, we choose our top two and a third runner-up. Then we work some more with them for another four weeks. And then we fly all four of us, including me and my counterpart coach, Zach Woods, to New York and compete.
And we took home the prize again.
Where does your love for performing and storytelling stem from?
Silver Anderson: I started writing stories when I was in second grade, but just telling stories is very fun. And I think the first time that I saw my sister — she started acting before I did — and she was in a show, and I was like, “I want to do that.” And then I didn't.
Instead, I went to [Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra], and I played bass for a year and a half. My parents would tell you that I played bass for two years. I only remember a little bit less than that. But yeah, acting started to be like an outlet for me to tell stories in a different way besides the words on the page, because sometimes the words off the page are also a great time.
You performed a monologue piece called Shame by Cheryl West. Why did you specifically choose this one?
Anderson: I have two reasons. I'll share this one. First, my typecast this year has been this omnipotent individual who is above everything else… but thinking of me as an actor… [there are] areas of my repertoire that I'm not as shaded in as they could be. So looking through the compendium, I was between Shame and there was a piece called Friends, Ones We Can Depend Upon, because I can kind of pull from the experience that that character has. But I didn't want to be me and do that acting thing this time. I wanted to try and spread my wings a little bit.
The other part of it for me was that there are a lot of good pieces in [Shame], and there are pieces that are a lot more popular than others, and seeing the talent that comes out of those pieces is always so wonderful and so great. But seeing different stories be told on either the Rep stage or on the national stage, seeing more pieces done by different people was another aspect of it for me. I wanted to do a piece that I hadn't seen win recently, so I was between this one that I relate to, or this one that could help me grow as an actor. And then I went with the one that'll help me grow, because I'm still growing and will continue to hopefully.
What advice do you have for young aspiring performers?
Anderson: I think the biggest piece of advice I have is to get up and do it. I face a lot of hesitancy with a lot of the things that I do, just because of anxiety and all that kind of stuff. But I think with acting in certain situations, it is better to get up and try than to sit back and let someone else do it. Because your brain would be filled with millions of “what-if” situations like, “Oh, what if I did get up there? What if someone saw me? What if someone laughs?” You won't know until you get there. And if storytelling, in any fashion, is the thing that you want to do, it is important to push yourself to tell that story, because otherwise, people simply will not listen to it. And I think that's kind of what we learned with this competition. We didn't have it before because no one was asking for it. You have to push the envelope to be like, “Hey, there are not enough Black people writing stories, or stories that are open to the public that we can all see all the time, and we need to fix that.”
So we need to make the effort to go fix that. Because, unfortunately, that's not just something that comes along very easily. But yeah, I think the biggest thing is just push yourself to do it — leap and then look — I think is a great way to put that.
You can learn more about the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s participation in the Next Narrative Monologue Competition by visiting Milwaukee Rep’s website.
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