By DANIELLE TEPPER

As Olivia Mullen knows, the works of William Shakespeare are a fundamental component of any acting student’s growth as a performer. The Red Bank Catholic junior has shared passions for drama and music, and to her ear, Shakespeare embodies both.

“Shakespeare’s work is beautiful,” she told redbankgreen this week. “It comes to me almost like a song. I’m not nervous performing it.”

Mullen’s heartfelt appreciation of the Bard of Avon won her a spot in the 29th annual English-Speaking Union‘s National Shakespeare Competition held in New York last month.

Each year, high school teachers across the country select two students from their theater classes to audition. In Monmouth County, 15 schools were represented at the regional branch competition at Brookdale Community College, where Mullen took first place.

“I didn’t even expect to be chosen to compete,” said Mullen, 17, of Middletown. “And then I wound up going to New York.”

All the competitors were put up in the International Student Center for a one-night stay, during which they were treated to an acting workshop at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“That night, everyone just wanted to talk,” said Mullen. “We were sleeping nine to a room with bunk beds, and everyone was so interested because we were all from different places, but we had a 5 a.m. wake-up call. It was exhausting, but amazing.”

At the semi-finals, held at Lincoln Center on April 23, each student performed a monologue and a sonnet of their choosing. Mullen went with Sonnet 36.

“I picked a sonnet that wasn’t recommended because it’s a bit tricky and complex,” said Mullen. “But I’m glad I chose 36 because no one else did it, and there were a lot of repeats.”

While she may not have won the grand prize (a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’s Young Actors Summer School in London), Mullen said the entire experience had a significant impact on her future plans.

“I’m definitely going to pursue acting, and most schools want some background in Shakespeare,” she said. “It’s a hard skill to acquire, but it’s important to appreciate it.”

Mullen has been researching Carnegie Mellon’s musical theater program as well as the drama program at Juilliard, and said she’s open to either.

“I have a passion for both, so I’d be happy either way,” she said.

Thirty members of the Teen Outreach Program at Red Bank Regional High completed a two-day Out of the Darkness track walk in the school gym Wednesday morning to promote awareness of suicide prevention as part of Children’s Mental Health Week. 

The idea for the walk came primarily from two proactive freshmen, Grace Rumph and Adam Canterbury, above, each of whom has lost a friend to suicide within the past two years.

“This is affecting our generation and there’s so much a person can do to help, but maybe they feel afraid to reach out,” said Rumph. “People need to know how important it is.” (Photos by Danielle Tepper. Click to enlarge)

Tickets are $20 each, and the raffle will be held at the store at 4 p.m. on May 20.  (Click to enlarge)

As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.

We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.

We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.

And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.

Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.

SATURDAY: Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale
Location: all over town. Maps available at the Red Bank Public Library and at many of the participating homes.
Time: Officially, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but sellers can set their own hours.

From an email update from Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010:

lots of records, books and air conditioners

SATURDAY: Pink Hat Tea Party
Pilgrim Baptist Church
172 Shrewsbury Avenue
Doors open 10:30 a.m., Event 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Don’t miss this important Paint the Town Pink event, presented by Riverview Medical Center. Gather all the special women in your life to join us for an educational and entertaining Pink Hat Tea, with a hat and apparel fashion show courtesy Geneva’s Boutique of Neptune, a speacial presentation from Adi Smolinsky, M.D., a Riverview Medical Center OB/GYN, education about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of the importance of annual mammography, and more! Refreshments will be provided by Jameson’s Ultimate Southern Cooking Restaurant in Neptune. Don’t forget to wear your pink hat!

*Pink Sale Event. Deck your pink all year long with our exclusive Paint the Town Pink gear and goodies for sale at this signature event.

This event is FREE but registration is required. RSVP: 1-800-DOCTORS

SUNDAY: Paint Everything Pink Community Day
Riverview Medical Center parking lot
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pink your town, pink your house, pink your family. Everything is pink at our family-centered, free Community Day! Featuring many of the same pink “zones” families have come to expect as well as exciting new ones, this year’s event will feature:

Kids’ Fun & Games: Rides, arts and crafts, face painting – all the things your kids have come to love! And don’t miss photos with Dr. Bernard from the Pawsitive Action Team at
K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital.

Pink it Yourself Man Cave: In line with this year’s theme of Men in Pink, our “man cave” will offer the men in your life an area just for them. Activities will include DYI demonstrations from the Home Depot, interactive games, and of course our exclusive Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts.

Rockin’ Country Thunder 106.3: Bring out the country in you! With live music from a local country artist, this local-favorite station will have you dancin’ in your boots. Your kids will love our pony rides and everyone can enjoy some good old fashioned root beer!

And that’s not all! Enjoy some snack-food favorites and other sweet treats, and beverages from a number of local pink partners, and don’t forget to stop by our educational tables to pick-up important information about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of raising awareness of the importance of annual mammography.

Special Pink Cotton Candy and Snow Cones presented by Arrow Limousine.

SUNDAY: Red Bank International Flavour Festival
White Street Parking Lot
12 p.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine

Here’s the National Weather Service forecast:

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind between 10 and 13 mph.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind around 9 mph.

By JOHN T. WARD

Kathie Panepinto was leading a tour of the Red Bank Primary School property and lamenting the heavy growth that hides an adjoining pond Monday when groundhog that had been sunning itself in the grass scooted across her path and into the brush.

“Oh, look at that,” she said said excitedly, noting that up-close sightings of deer and other wildlife are common at the school, which sits on landfill in a former wetlands abutting the Swimming River.

It was the kind of moment that for decades has inspired talk of the school’s potential as natural sciences learning center. And it underscored the value of ongoing efforts by Panepinto and other volunteers in their most ambitious effort to date: creating a permanent physical link between the school and the inaccessible pond.

A concept plan shows a walkway out into the pond that the foundation hopes to win funding for. (Click to enlarge)

Since its revival from dormancy four years ago, the nonprofit Red Bank Borough Education Foundation has focused its efforts on small-bore projects: leading cleanups of the 17-acre primary school property, lending a hand and a few dollars to installations such as a butterfly garden, a small greenhouse and a human sundial clock.

Now, though, the all-volunteer group is raising its sights with a proposal to build an outdoor classroom in the form of a pier and observation deck on the pond. The structure would enable students at the K-3 school to see land and aquatic habitats up close, and “to do wet and muddy samplings,” said RBBEF member and Councilman Ed Zipprich.

“Most folks don’t even know there’s a pond back there,” said member Susan Berke.

“The idea is to make access to the pond not just for science, but for reading, writing, art,” said Panepinto, an RBBEF officer.

No cost estimate for the project has yet been worked up, and foundation members don’t even know if they would need and might obtain permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection for the structure, which may be subject to limitations on building in coastal areas.

Still, they’ve begun the process of trying to win a grant for as much as $460,000 from the National Science Foundation, said foundation president Doug Winning, an architect. “We’re going for the full enchilada,” he said.

Meantime, the organization has raised about $10,000 in each of the past two years through art auctions held at the Atrium at Navesink Harbor. This year, no such event is planned, though members hope to put together an Antiques Roadshow-type event for 2013.

Meantime, the group has produced a reusable canvas shopping tote featuring Red Bank student art that will soon be available around town for $5. For $10, residents get the tote and membership in the RBBEF.

“We’re still taking baby steps at this point, but we’ve got momentum going, and that’s the important thing,” said Zipprich.

Rehearsing for this week’s Spring Dance Concerts at Red Bank Regional, VPA dance majors include (front row, left to right) Phoenicia Butler, Jessica Adderly, Dillion Jackson, plus (back row, left to right) Kendall Van Winkle, Bella Caputi and  Samantha Lore. 

When the Visual and Performing Arts program at Red Bank Regional High School puts on a show, it’s like the Big Game.

Beginning Thursday night and carrying over into the middle of the coming week, the students of the VPA –majors in dance, music and visual arts from all over the Shore area — will take center stage in a series of showcase events, starting with a pair of Spring Dance Concert performances and continuing with the first fully staged opera production in the school’s history.

Katherine Robinson (Shrewsbury) looks on as Evangeline Athanasiou (Red Bank) confronts Patrick Martini (Union Beach) in DIDO AND AENEAS, one of two full one-act operas to be presented next week at Red Bank Regional. (Click to enlarge)

Some 42 dance majors — including six seniors performing together for the last time — take to the boards of the RBR Theatre this Thursday at 7 pm, and again on Saturday at 2 pm, for a recital that combines the work of special guest choreographers with the choreography of the student dancers themselves.

Offering up 30 numbers that range from jazz to hip hop and other contemporary styles, the Spring Dance Concert program features the input of  Say Dance Collective founder Gabrielle Barnett, as well as several VPA dance major alumni (Jamie Baptist, Gwen Baum, Jessica Berube, Kali Drake, Anthony Tiedeman) who’ve gone on to pursue dance and dance education careers.

Berube, who’s served as a student teacher during the 2011-2012 school year at RBR, contributed an original piece entitled Off I Go, which will be realized onstage by the six senior dancers — among them Red Bank’s Phoenicia Butler, who choreographed three of the segments  in the spring show (and who will be studying toward a career in dance education at the University of North Carolina).

Also performing in Off I Go will be three students from Little Silver — Kristin Balve, Dillon Jackson and Kendall Van Winkle — as well as Alexis Hines (Union Beach) and Colleen Strazdas (Neptune City).

RBR faculty member Kristopher Zook says he was looking for “something new” to stretch the abilities of his vocal students — and on the evenings of May 1 and 2, the RBR stage offers something unique to local audiences: a night at the opera.

Featured are a pair of works which, although they were written hundreds of years apart from each other, have a couple of things in common. Both are one-acts of roughly an hour in length, and both are in English.

Written in 1946, The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti (best known for Amahl and the Night Visitors) will be followed by Dido and Aeneas, a “tragic love story” (written in 1689 by Henry Purcell) that has the distinction of being the first opera composed in the English language. The operas will be presented at 7 pm on Tuesday, May 1, and again at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 2.

Zook, who will be directing both operas, called the production “an ambitious project for high school singers, and for some the first opera they have ever attempted, but our talented students are up to the task.”

Starring as Dido is Evangeline Athanasiou of Red Bank, who as winner of the New Jersey Governor School Opera honor is ranked as the top operatic vocal artist in Garden State high schools. Athanasiou, who plans to continue her vocal studies at the Boston Conservatory of Music, will share the stage with Patrick Martini of Union Beach as Aeneas. Shurmila Dhar (Little Silver) and Katharine Robinson (Shrewsbury) are also in the cast for Wednesday’s performance.

Appearing in The Medium on Tuesday are Gabriella Concepcion (Hazlet), Christopher Dubrow (Shrewsbury), Vincent Martini (Union Beach), Erin Murphy (Millstone), Lauren Staub (Avon) — and Little Silver’s Madelyn Monaghan, currently starring as Dorothy in the Phoenix Productions staging of The Wizard of Oz.

Tickets for either performance of A Night at the Opera, or either of the Spring Dance Concerts, are priced at $10 for adults ($5 for students or senior citizens) and may be purchased at the door, or reserved in advance by calling (732) 842-8000, ext. 227.

The vocal students will return to the RBR Theatre stage on Thursday, May 24 for a one-time choral concert entitled Comedy and Tragedy — a program that juxtaposes John Rutter’s sober “Requiem” with the comic cantata “Knock Knock” by the enigmatic “P.D.Q. Bach” (as channeled by the madly musical Professor Peter Schickele).

By JOHN T. WARD

Three Red Bank council members wore hooded garments to Wednesday night’s bimonthly meeting as a local group put out word of a silent vigil next week in memory of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

A poster for the event, called “We Are Trayvon Martin,” encourages attendees to wear hoodies, the type of sweatshirt that Martin was wearing when he was killed in an encounter with a gun-toting resident of Sanford, Florida a month ago.

Councilwoman Sharon Lee, in a vivid blue hoodie from the Unversity of North Carolina, where her son attends school, tells redbankgreen she wore the garment on the council dais in solidarity with others to call attention to the stigmatization of African-American youth.

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have one. We put our children out in them,” she said. “But if it’s that much of a problem, then we do need to desensitize people by letting them see them all the time.

“They’re just material things,” she said. “They’re not the substance of the person wearing them.”

Councilmembers Ed Zipprich and Juanita Lewis also wore lightweight sweaters with hoods to the meeting.

Organized by IMPACT, a youth advocacy group created by Red Bank native Darnell Lewis, the vigil is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at the pocket park at the corner of Shrewsbury Avenue and Drs. James Parker Boulevard.

“Community members will peacefully assemble and stand silently together in his remembrance and raise awareness on the national issue of stereotyping and injustices against African-American young men,” a press release for the event says.

“The parent involvement in this school has just been amazing,” said Cohen, 38, who’s been principal for the past six years. “That gives the kids a real sense of belonging and pride.”

Superintendent Laura Morana tells redbankgreen that an interim principal is expected to be named tonight, and that a search committee will commence interviews for a replacement next week. (Click to enlarge)

For the third consecutive year, Red Bank Middle Schoolers have exterminated the competition in a national video-production contest sponsored by a pest-control trade group.

The $3,000 grand prize for the school’s ‘I Hate Rats’ video, above, adds to a long list of accolades, cash and supplies won by the school’s vaunted video program.

Not bad for a bit of rapping that features rodents, rat poop and a reference to the plague.

RBMS students have been steamrolling the competition in recent years. In addition to this year’s video, which as in past years is to be used as a public service announcement, the middle school has created prize-winners on the topics of mosquitoes and cockroaches.

In 2009, the school’s budding YouTubers bagged $30,000 worth of electronic equipment for the school in one shot.

The latest prize, awarded by the National Pest Management Association, is to be used for science education, the association said in an announcement Monday.

From the announcement:

“Every year, Red Bank Middle School stands out for its high-quality work and the students do an exceptional job of discussing the important health risks associated with household pests,” said Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for the NPMA.

Runner-up Lakewood Christian Schools of Long Beach, CA also received a $1,000 grant for its PSA, “Flea On Trial.”

“The contest encourages children to learn about the fascinating world of animals and insects while also understanding the importance of protecting public health, food and property from pests,” Henriksen said. “This contest also allows teachers to make learning a fun and interactive experience inside the classroom.”

Teachers and students in grades four through eight were challenged to create educational television PSAs highlighting the health and property risks posed by common household pests such as rodents, ants, cockroaches and stinging insects. Entries werejudged on originality, creativity, health messaging and overall appeal.

The contest was administered through the trade group’s educational children’s website, PestWorldForKid, where other entries may be viewed.

A referendum question on whether to float a $750,000 bond toward the anticipated $1 million cost of the building expansion was approved by a vote of 628 to 420, the Press reports.

From the Press:

Little Silver is among about 26 percent of school districts in the state that do not offer a full-day kindergarten. School officials had posted a question-and-answers note on the website about the rationale, the plan and the cost of adding full-day kindergarten.

“I have a three-year-old and don’t understand why there isn’t full-time kindergarten,” said Kristen Baeri, who said while she conceded it is expensive to live in the borough, added the tax impact “wasn’t a concern.”

Anthony Fillippelli called full-day kindergarten “a good thing for the community,” adding that his son is attending a private school to take advantage of a full-day program.

“Property taxes are not an issue. It costs for (his son) to go to a private school,” he said.

One selling point that officials used was that the school district is in the unique position of retiring old debt in 2013 and 2014, which will drive down the increase in local school taxes, if voters approve the question and the district takes out a 15-year loan.