Douglas Anderson Senior Brennan Mitchell receives full scholarship to pursue theatre career
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — April 8, 2024 — Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Foundation announced today that senior musical theatre major Brennan Mitchell received a prestigious Kenan Excellency Scholarship from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) that will ensure full tuition, fees, room and board for his education in their theatre program.
Each applicant was required to be nominated by a university arts faculty member, in addition to compete in a rigorous interview process with a panel of community leaders. In the end, five students were chosen out of the whole country. Mitchell was able to form a relationship with the school through attending the Drama Summer Intensive at UNCSA. Through this three-week program, Mitchell was able to dive into Shakespeare, monologue and college preparation, text analysis, acting on camera and movement in acting.
Mitchell’s attendance was sponsored by Gary McCalla through the Douglas Anderson (DA) Foundation’s Summer Intensive Scholarship. The DA Foundation provides summer scholarship grants to deserving students, particularly those with few resources, in each art area to attend a summer intensive workshop or study program.
"I was amazed by how positive and welcoming the intensive experience was, and immediately felt accepted into their community," Mitchell said of his time at UNCSA. "UNCSA helped me realize the wide possibility of progress within art and has motivated me to find my own voice through it."
Mitchell appeared in five DA productions, most recently as Pierre in "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812," for which he was nominated for an Applause Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and Outstanding Lead Performer. He was also seen as Amos Hart in Chicago (Winner: Applause Award for Outstanding Lead Performer), Michael in "Dancing at Lughnasa," Konstatin in "The Seagull," Mark in "A Chorus Line" and understudied Mark Cohen in "Rent."
For his role of Amos Hart, he represented DA at the Applause Awards at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts as a junior. He received third runner-up as the overall winner to represent the Dr. Phillips Center at the Jimmy Awards, part of the National High School Musical Theatre Festival on Broadway's Minskoff Theatre stage in New York City.
This past year, the DA Foundation’s DuBow Family Scholarship Program funded 18 students to attend art workshops throughout Italy, England and the United States ranging from music to dance and visual art to theatre.
To learn more about the DA Foundation, please visit www.datheatreboosters.org or follow them on Instagram @datheatre.
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About the Douglas Anderson Foundation:
The DA Foundation, a non-profit corporation created in 1987, is committed to supporting the arts with a priority of supporting Douglas Anderson School of the
Art’s critical art’s needs. As in most specialized arts schools the arts needs go far beyond what an individual parent-support group or the school district is able to fund, specifically in regards to the demanding arts departments’ needs; such as, master arts classes, collaborative partnerships, specialized arts equipment and projects, summer arts scholarships, arts teacher fellowships, arts events, public relations and arts programming.
The DA Foundation is committed to providing critical funding necessary to ensure that the school is able to meet its mission of supporting arts in our community and providing DA students “cutting-edge” training and intensive arts study, as well as to ensure that DA’s arts programs meet the standards set by our nation’s top arts conservatories, art institutes and universities.
About the Department of Theatre:
In three collaborative tracks (Musical, Performance and Technical), DA theatre students receive an in-depth study of Theatre Arts that begin with foundation through application, culminating in what will hopefully be a lifelong appreciation for the art. Modeled after the top conservatory programs in the country, DA Theatre values process over product and boasts a faculty of twelve nationally-recognized theatre professionals. DA Theatre students have been honored as National High School Musical Theatre Awards (the "Jimmy's") Finalists, National YoungArts Foundation Recipients, Regional Applause Award Winners, US Presidential Scholars in the Arts, National ACT-SO Competition Winners, National Coalition Against Censorship Honorees, Arts for Life Recipients, and Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative Winners. The curriculum includes Acting, Directing, Musical Theatre Repertoire, Voice & Dialects, Advanced Movement, Issue-Based Theatre, Musical Theatre Styles, Stagecraft, Costumes & Makeup Design, Theatre History, Lighting & Sound Design, Drafting & Digital Application, Scenic Painting, Plays & Playwrights, Foundations of Dance, and more.