Students from more than 80 high schools across the state will be in Yankton this weekend for the 110th Annual State Oral Interpretation Festival.  

Seven Madison High School students are competing in this weekend’s festival, which is held on Friday and Saturday at Yankton High School.  The Madison High School Oral Interpretation students qualified in all seven categories in the event.  

This weekend’s State Interpretation Festival competitors have qualified through a combination of local school, district and regional competitions.  There are around 100 entries in each of three classes – “B”, “A”, and “AA”. During the State Festival, the students will compete to achieve a “Superior” rating, which is the equivalent of a state championship in their contest event.  The competition is divided into seven contest events: Non-Original Oratory, Interpretation of Serious Reading, Storytelling, Poetry Reading, Humorous Reading, Duet Interpretation, and Readers Theatre. 

The State Oral Interpretation Festival competition begins Friday morning and concludes Saturday afternoon.  The awards for each session’s competition will be announced at the conclusion of the session. “Team Excellence” awards, recognizing the high schools whose over-all entries excelled during the State Festival, will be presented at the conclusion of the competition on Saturday afternoon.

The competition is free and open to the public.