ACES Educational Center for the Arts

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ACES Educational Center for the Arts, or ECA, is an American public arts magnet high school located in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. It offers five departments in the visual and performing arts: Music, Dance, Theatre, Creative Writing, and Visual Arts. Students take academic courses in their "sending schools" and come from across the state to study at their chosen department in the afternoons. Students apply to individual departments, and must prepare a portfolio or demonstration for an interview.

School is held from 1:00pm to 4:00pm, Monday through Thursday.

1 Visual Arts Department
2 Theatre Department
3 Electives
4 Notable alumni
5 External links

[edit] Visual Arts Department

Located on the fifth floor of the building is the Visual Arts Department. The curriculum is divided into three mediums: two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and media. Two-dimensional includes classes such as drawing and painting, three-dimensional is made up of various sculpture classes, and media is photography, animation, Photoshop, and so on. The classes offered each quarter change constantly due to the small staff. To evenly distribute students among the mediums, each student is required to take at least one class in each medium. The final quarter is a free-choice, and students may repeat a class within a medium. Classes meet every day.

[edit] Theatre Department

Located on the third floor studio, Little Theatre, and Studio 70 you will find the classes of the theatre department. Run by 5 teachers and countless guest teachers the curriculum stretches from common acting techniques to stage design, lighting, different cultural theatre, stage management, playwriting, and many others. The goal of this curriculum is to teach the students that there is more to theatre than just standing on the stage. Classes are split up into 3 classes per semester. First semester, students have a main class 3 of the 4 days (1:00 to 3:00 on Mondays and Tuesdays, and 1:00 to 4:00 on Thursdays) where the main focus is straight theatre, learning text and performing on a set stage. The second class is a less broad theatre class that meets 1 day out of the week (Tuesdays from 3:00 to 4:00). The last class would be the Wednesday class which meets based on what grade you are currently in (from 1:00 to 3:00). Second semester is the time to shine. The teachers will pick that years performance text and present it, after auditions, during the second semester. The students that get cast use their main class as rehearsal time, while the other students will have a different theatre class to take. Every three years the theatre department puts on an all-department mainstage performance. This is different than the normal mainstage performances because every person in the theatre department does something for the performance. Whether you're acting in the play, making the costumes, working backstage, building the set, or helping manage, everyone has an important part in the performance. Throughout the year the theatre department attends plays and each student is required to write their own theatre review, for a grade, about it. In many of the classes students do character building exercises and other exercises, to strengthen them as actors. These works are the basis of grading for the department, although, your actual hard work in class and work on stage also plays a big roll. At the end of the year a few teachers offer students to enroll in the summer theatre program that is lead from the department. Graduating seniors receive a folder of all the work they completed while attending ECA to use in the future.

[edit] Electives

Electives are semester classes, offered to all students in all departments. They meet from 3:00pm to 4:00pm on Mondays and Wednesdays. Electives offer the chance for the students to mix between departments, as well as receive some instruction in an area outside of their chosen department.