The International Festival of Arts & Ideas Fellowship Program is designed to give high school students unparalleled exposure to careers in the arts as they prepare to pursue college and/or enter the workforce. The Arts & Ideas Fellowship Program will culminate in an intensive two-week immersion experience at the 15th annual International Festival of Arts & Ideas in June 2010. During that time students will attend open rehearsals, performances and panels/symposia, meet-and-greet with artists and speakers, attend master classes and support Festival staff in their chosen area of interest.
For more information about the Festival Fellowship program, visit the Fellowship page on our website.
Leading up to the Festival, you'll hear from all of the Fellows about their experiences. Up first is Edward Chase, a senior at Co-Op High School.
My name is Edward Chase and I am a senior theater student at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School. My main interest is playwriting, which I hope to study next year at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Fellowship Program was introduced to me by my theater teacher and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. I came in for the study of the arts and being involved with the festival, however, I'm also learning about critical writing and what it's like running a festival and non-profit organization like the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Thanks to this program my fellow fellows (say that 5 times fast) and I were asked to select 5 acts for a Weekend Community Showcase, the middle weekend of the festival.
When it comes to selecting acts for the showcase, we all, or at least I, thought it would be easy. I figured there would be some really great catches and some real stinkers, and weeding out one from the other would be a simple task. Two sessions and two hours later, and boy was I wrong! As a group of promising and highly individual youths, we make a good team, but we all had our own opinion on each act. Some loved a performance that others despised, while some just wanted to keep an act in for variety. And even when we found an act that we all liked, one of us piped up and recalled how they might have seen them before, and how we might have a problem getting them off the stage. And then we were back to the drawing board. In the end, some acts that were highly praised ended up as runner ups, whereas others that we had not at first anticipated would make it in managed to crawl back into the winners circle. I am decidedly proud of the list of performances that we, as Fellows, proposed. As our instructor Dawn says, if you don't like it, come yell at us.
Check back regularly to hear more from the Festival Fellows, as well as other artists and thinkers at the Festival!