York Performance in the Round Team Shares Message of Kindness

Elmhurst, IL – After back-to-back regional and sectional championships, the York Community High School Speech & Drama’s Performance in the Round (PIR) piece, “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse,” earned a state championship at the Illinois High School Association Speech State Final on Feb. 18 for the first time in the school’s history. The team of 12 students brought their 15-minute adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s 2019 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year to compete against teams from across the state.

“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse” tells the story of a young boy, lost in the wild and trying to find his way home. On this journey, he finds a family with the animals he meets along the way. The York PIR team features Alexa Klein (10), Charlie Matias (11), Elle Kramer (11), Eloise Hill (9), Gio Santoro (11), Jack Davies (11), Luke Hanley (12), Noley Hanna (11), Oliver Roy (12), Sam Yungmann (11) and Will Fischer (11) with Tara Freund (9) as stage manager.

“We have absolutely loved this book for years, and this was the perfect opportunity to share its messages with a broader audience,” Matt Bourke, director, said. “In a world that can feel divided, we love what a journey like this can teach us about love, kindness, and our shared humanity. It is the perfect story for such imperfect times.”

For each show the directing team works on, whether a full-scale musical like “Bandstand” this spring or a competitive piece like PIR, they ground their work in their year’s theme and program’s message: “Be the good.” Though this might be in the context of a competition, the team believes storytelling and compassion must be at the forefront of their work.

“We believe deeply in the power of storytelling,” Rebecca Marianetti, director, said. “When we choose our material, we insist that it be rooted in themes and messages our students and community need to hear and navigate. Mackesy’s tale does so simply and powerfully.”

Immediately, students took to these messages and worked tirelessly to ensure they were telling this story earnestly and authentically. The piece itself teaches about finding a family—it would appear the cast took the same message to heart.

“This experience has taught me that performing is a lot more than putting on a show: it’s about the connections you make with people, and how you make others feel as you perform,” Eloise Hill, freshman, said. “This group of upperclassmen showed me how kind people can truly be. They made me feel loved every rehearsal.”

And this love extended beyond the immediate cast. Consistently after performances, actors were approached by audience members sharing how they felt watching their piece, sometimes with eyes still watering. York’s team attributes much of their success to choosing a show that resonated so deeply with so many.

“After our first round, a student from a different school came up to some of us to share what our piece meant to him,” Oliver Roy, senior, said. “He told us he had been struggling with his mental health, that this was exactly what he needed to hear that day. We later saw him in our final round, sitting in the front row, and it made an already special experience even more so.”

One major tenet of PIR is the reliance on an ensemble to tell a story, not just individual performers. Contest rules place limitations on set pieces, props, lighting, and sound, so much of the work must be done by the actors themselves.

“It’s almost like building a pyramid,” Sam Yungmann, junior, said. “We all come together to form a base that supports this beautiful message. In this ensemble, you feel an overwhelming sense of affirmation, knowing that we cannot succeed without each other.”

The Illinois High School Association has run the Performance in the Round competition in conjunction with the Individual Events/Speech State Final since 1997. York had previously broken into the final round twice before, in 2013 and 2020. This is the first sectional and state championship for the team, though the team is much more proud of what they were able to do with their platform.

“That was the goal of the piece: to spread kindness and love,” Roy said. “And I can confidently say we achieved it.”

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