The Sara Evelyn Smith Scholarship winners meet on a Zoom call. At top left, winners Marianne Paculba and Ida Wadman, as well as sponsor Anne Towbes. At middle, from left, Maria Lopez, Henry Alper and Haoyu Wang comprise the middle row. At bottom, Isaac Hernandez, rounds out the six winners.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara City College Theatre Arts Department awarded six students as winners of this year’s Sara Evelyn Smith Monologue Competition. They each received $1,000 in scholarship funds.
The winners for the 2020-21 school year are: Marianne Paculba, Ida Wadman, Maria Lopez, Henry Alper, Haoyu Wang and Isaac Hernandez.
The students presented monologues via Zoom and were judged by theatre arts faculty and Anne Smith Towbes, a past SBCC Foundation board member who played an instrumental role in establishing the competition in 2001.
The Sara Evelyn Smith Scholarships in Theatre Arts honor their namesake, a woman who spent over 50 years educating students in theatre arts. She acted in many productions, taught in Detroit and directed musicals and youth theatre for most of her life.
Her son, the late Bob Smith, owned KEYT-TV and her daughter-in-law Anne was a theatre arts educator as well as past president of the Board of Directors of the Lobero Theatre.
— Annelise Hanshaw
