High School versus Performing Arts High School

britbrat1961
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:41:58 +0000

Performing arts school here in SoCal is either a public or private school that offers both academic and conservatory type arts classes.

At my son’s school (and it is only one of many in our area), each student must be academically acceptable and then audition or submit a portfolio (for visual arts). If accepted, the students attend the academic part of their day from 8am-2pm. They then begin their conservatory classes until 5pm each day. The conservatory part of the school is run through a college and seperately funded, but gives many courses particular to each specific area of study and is all a part of the students official hs transript.

Over the course of 4 years, an MT student will recieive 4 levels of acting, voice training, multiple levels of dance, audition techniques, stage combat, make-up and costuming and music theory to just name a few.

In addition, the instructors are from the performance world so there are opportunites for the students to perform with Broadway artists and learn from people who have “been there, done that!”

Even with this opportunity, many students study privately for dance and voice in preparation for the rigorous and competetive nature of the college auditions process.

This is just one example, but the biggest misonception is that the pa hs are private and very, very expensive. There are ones like this that are a public school with a conservatory included.