Palo Alto High School students from the Theater 3 and 4 class will perform audition packages for professional adjudicators on Monday Oct. 12 in the third annual Theater 3 and 4 Audition Showcase.

Adjudicators from TheatreWorks, a local professional theater company, will evaluate the students’ monologues at the showcase. The students will perform for Leslie Martinson, casting director for TheatreWorks, and Mary Sutton, director of The Workshop, the educational and community outreach component of TheatreWorks. New to the program this year is Kimberly Mohne Hill, an assistant professor in the Theater and Dance Department of Santa Clara University who has also worked with TheatreWorks.

Participating students will introduce themselves and perform two two-minute monologues, according to theater teacher Kathleen Woods, who instructed the students to choose contrasting pieces to demonstrate their variety of abilities.

“The idea is to show their range as a performer and to give a menu of the certain things that they can do, and so the more contrasting the pieces, the better,” Woods said.

The audition showcase will feature two acts of 12 students each, according to Woods. After the monologues are finished, the students will be divided into three groups to rotate among the adjudicators for verbal feedback.

Woods believes that the adjudicators will provide valuable evaluations of the students.

“For students that are auditioning for college, for the community, and for professional theater, they are getting feedback from somebody who doesn’t know them and is very objective,” Woods said. “It gives them a sense of what they’re doing well and what they need to work on.”

Senior Hannah Crown agrees with Woods about the significance of the adjudicators’ advice.

“I’m probably going to audition for colleges for theater, so this is preparation for that,” Crown said. “To have two professional adjudicators is really cool.”

The idea for the audition showcase came from one of Woods’ students at Saratoga High School, where the program took place for eight years prior to Woods’ arrival at Paly. This will be Paly’s third year hosting the event.

Woods says that the program provides an invaluable opportunity for theater students wishing to improve their acting skills.

“It gives them an opportunity to practice the audition process in a little higher stakes environment,” Woods said. “It’s one thing to perform for your peers and it’s another thing to perform for the casting director of TheatreWorks.”

The audition showcase will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Monday Oct. 12 in the Haymarket Theater and is open to the public.