Stuart Hall School Fine Arts Emphasis Program

Stuart Hall School offers a variety of arts emphasis programs, including music, visual arts, and theatre arts.

Arts Emphasis Program For Students Passionate about the Arts

T

he fine arts are a valued presence at Stuart Hall School.

We mark the progression of the school year with performances by our music and theatre departments, and we line our hallways and fill our display cases with the work

of our visual artists. At Stuart Hall, students come to understand the profound satisfaction to be gained not simply from enjoying art but also by creating it. Nowhere is this truer than in our Arts Emphasis program for Upper School students.

The Arts Emphasis program is a unique opportunity for students with a passionate commitment to theatre, music, or visual arts to explore their own talents. With the guidance of our

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THE DOORS TO THIS HALL OPEN

arts emphasis Arts Emphasis Program

TO INFINITE POSSIBILITIES P.O. Box 210

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Staunton, Virginia 24402 540.885.0356 888.306.8926 toll free 540.886.2275 fax expert arts faculty members, they gain in skill and assurance as they progress through the Arts Emphasis program, building to an original capstone project—a recital, a performance, or a portfolio for instance—during the senior year. While all Arts Emphasis students master the fundamental forms and history

www.stuart-hall.org Hunter McGuire Lower School 74 Quicks Mill Road Verona, Virginia 24482

of their disciplines, each student has the freedom to shape a

540.248.2404

program that reflects his or her individual interests.

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The success of our Arts Emphasis program can be measured in a number of ways. Students with an Arts Emphasis designation on their diploma have an outstanding record of securing admission to the nation’s most prestigious arts colleges and universities. Equally important is the self-knowledge and sense

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of accomplishment they take with them as they enter the next stage of their lives.

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“Once enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music. I began to appreciate the Stuart Hall Music Department .”

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Regardless of whether

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lthough the students in our Music Emphasis program all share a passionate commitment to their art, their particular commitment is as varied as music itself.

Our aim at Stuart Hall is to respond to their individual interests, providing the knowledge and the appropriate challenges students need to deepen and develop their talents. Whether they are drawn to performance or conducting, composition or musicology, we build a customized program for each student around our core curriculum.

At a minimum, students spend their last two years at Stuart Hall pursuing the Music Emphasis—and those years are productive and busy. Students complete Music Appreciation/History, Music Theory, and AP Music Theory. They teach a Middle School music class or work throughout the year with the Middle School Chorus or Orchestra. In addition, they prepare for their capstone

a career as artists, Visual Arts Emphasis students will graduate from Stuart

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project, which might take the form of a senior recital, a comprehensive project on music theory or history, or an original composition.

Students are also expected to perform in one of our school ensembles—the Upper School Chorus, Upper School Orchestra, Jazz Artistry, or Chamber Vocal Ensemble—and to audition for at least one extra activity each year such as district competitions and off-campus performances.

One of the goals of the Music Emphasis program is to help students determine if they have sufficient dedication and talent to pursue a career in music. Those who have found these qualities in themselves have gone on study at institutions like the New England Conservatory of Music, Shenandoah Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, Indiana University, and the Manhattan School of Music.

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Hall knowing how art fits into their lives.

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“The Theatre Emphasis program is not only

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about furthering one’s

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ur Visual Arts Emphasis students come to us with talent.

Our goal is to help them translate that talent into a unique creative voice.

We do this in a number of ways. We pose open-ended creative challenges, encouraging students to move beyond their current skills and comfort zones. We expose them to a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and printmaking.

We emphasize fundamental skills like observed drawing, mixing colors, and design, and we open up the studio to guest artists, who contribute their own perspectives and expertise and who demonstrate, for those who are motivated, that it is possible to build a life around art.

The core of the curriculum is the Studio Art class, which is offered for two periods each day and incorporates art history.

Students may take the Visual Arts Emphasis for up to four years,

range and ability as an artist but also about developing an understanding of oneself as a person.” Lizzie Fistel, ’09

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working with greater independence as they build a representative portfolio of signature pieces and take on the challenge of mounting a senior show.

Each year, we take our Arts Emphasis students to National Portfolio Day, which is organized by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Member schools review student artwork, discuss their programs, and answer questions about professional careers in art. Stuart Hall students regularly receive provisional acceptance based on their portfolio reviews.

Visual Arts Emphasis students have been accepted by the Pratt Institute, the Parsons School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Otis School of Design, and the Rhode Island School of Design. Regardless of whether they decide to choose careers as artists, Visual Arts Emphasis students will graduate from Stuart Hall knowing how art fits into their lives.

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Theatre Arts Emphasis

etween American Shakespeare Center productions at the Blackfriars Playhouse and the Master of Fine Arts program at nearby Mary Baldwin College, theatre flourishes in Staunton—and the Theatre Arts Emphasis program makes the most of it. Thanks to our longstanding relationships with both organizations and the annual round of performances we present at Stuart Hall, our students have ample opportunity to gain the hands-on experience so critical to development in the theatre arts.

When they are not performing, Theatre Arts Emphasis students are in the classroom taking courses designed to hone their skills and ground them in the history and traditions of their craft. They complete Introduction to Theatre, Acting Studio, and Shakespeare in Performance, and they apply the knowledge they gain in these courses and their performance experiences to develop their own

capstone projects. The variety and quality of these projects is impressive. Students have presented one-person shows, directed plays, and taught their own middle-school acting classes.

The goal of the Theatre Arts Emphasis is to help students find their own voices. At the same time, since theatre is a collective endeavor, they also learn to meld their individual vision with that of the group. This is especially true of the one-act play that Theatre Arts Emphasis students produce and perform at the annual Virginia Theatre Association Conference. In addition, the VTA Conference provides a wonderful opportunity for students to compare and measure their skills against their peers and to gain exposure to college theatre programs from around Virginia.

Theatre Arts Emphasis students have been accepted into colleges and universities that offer strong theatre programs such as New York University, Dickinson College, the University of Virginia, Davidson College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Michigan, and Elon University.

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