All’s Well for High School Thespians : Drama: Estancia High School actress is runner-up in L.A.-area Shakespeare competition.

One performer mocked virginity. Another stood drenched in blood after her husband stabbed his rival to death. A third vowed to seek fame through cruel revenge.

Nope, this was not the work of some avant-garde playwright whose funding request was turned down by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This was the immortal Bard himself, performed Saturday night by high school students vying for thespian honors in the fourth annual National Shakespeare Competition sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States.

If all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, these students burned with a desire to play many parts. They writhed on the floor. They beseeched the heavens. They wiped away tears, swore vengeance and trembled in exquisite agony.

Stephanie Burden of Estancia High School in Costa Mesa was picked as one of two runners-up in the Los Angeles-area competition. She trailed only Armando Daniel, 18, of San Pedro High School, who won a trip to New York City for the national finals, which will coincide with Shakespeare’s 428th birthday in late April.

Burden, 18, shared the runner-up category with Jennifer Ricchiazzi of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Canada Flintridge.

Burden performed the role of Isabella from “Measure From Measure.” The tough, emotional scene of a sister who tells her brother he must die or jeopardize her virginity was found by the judges to be honest, simple and sensible.

“It was a little frightening,” Burden said after her performance.

She said her Isabella was a stiff characterization at first. “But the more I did it, the more I liked it. I grew into this role,” she said in an interview Sunday.

Unlike previous competitions, Burden said the Shakespeare performances were watched by each competitor. “We got to see what each performer did, so you knew what you had to work harder on,” she said.

Each of seven finalists performed a dramatic monologue, a sonnet and a random passage that was thrust into their hands 30 minutes before going onstage. Judges said the competition was very close, but measure for measure, they were impressed by Daniel’s cool command of the 16th-Century prose and his willingness to take interpretive risks.

“We thought he made some pretty bold choices; he had a clear idea of how he thought the pieces should go,” said Louis Fantasia, education director for the Shakespeare Globe Center in San Diego.

In particular, the judges admired the moment when Daniel, likening virginity to a pear ripening on the vine, reached out and plucked the imaginary fruit, taking a hearty bite.

For Barbara Van Holt, Burden’s drama instructor at Estancia, the competition was another high showing for Burden, whom Van Holt described as one of top actors in Orange County.

On Sunday, Burden was rehearsing at the Laguna Moulton Theater in Laguna Beach, where she has won a major role in the play, “To Gillian on her 37th Birthday,” which opens March 19.

She also is playing Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd,” Stephen Sondheim’s musical at Estancia High, Van Holt said.

“Stephanie is very focused and is not only a great student but seems to have a nice talent for this,” said Pamela Burden, the student’s mother. “Her father and I are willing to see how far it will go.”

The young actress, who has her sights on a college with a strong drama department, summed it up by saying simply: “It was good experience.”

The English-Speaking Union, the sponsor of the event, also provides schools with academic programs to encourage students to develop literary and dramatic talents. Begun in 1988, its annual competition now draws 6,000 participants nationally.

Some were newcomers to performing; others, like 17-year-old William Barker, are greasepaint veterans. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” demanded Barker, playing a fiery Shylock from “Merchant of Venice.” The teen-ager attends the Van Nuys High School magnet program and has appeared on TV sitcoms such as “Growing Pains.”

For Daniel’s drama teacher, Sheila Ryle, the evening was a replay of last year’s triumph, when her student Micayla Birondo won the California competition. Her strategy? “I tell everybody, keep it simple and honest. It has to be real,” Ryle said.

Her star pupil agreed. “Shouting throughout the whole performance just for shouting’s sake isn’t the way to do it,” Daniel mused.

Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this story.