Visual & Performing Arts at JCHS
The award-winning JCHS Visual & Performing Arts Department provides opportunities for every student to express what cannot be stated through words alone.
JCHS incorporates visual art into all aspects of the student experience through collaboration with performing arts, integration into academic curriculum, gallery showcases and site-specific art installations. Student artists can develop and process film in our dark room, create relief prints on our printing press, or explore three-dimensional sculpture using our pottery wheel and kiln. Each year culminates with an interactive Arts Evening, open to the public, where students can showcase their work. You can read more about our current and past art shows here.
Through vocal and instrumental ensembles, students advance their skills, while developing their knowledge of a variety of cultures, periods and styles. They may compose, arrange music, and learn the art of improvisation and accompaniment. In addition, they have the opportunity to perform both in the school and the wider community, including solo work, orchestral concerts, and drama production accompaniment.
The filmmaking program introduces students to the creative process of filmmaking – from conceptualization of story to production and post-production processes. They view and study the techniques employed by some of the most influential filmmakers of the last 100 years. Students have the opportunity to advance to Honors Filmmaking where they acquire more nuanced skills in visualization, camera movement and shot composition, special effects, lighting, sound, music, and editing.
JCHS students explore every aspect of the dramatic arts from design and technical theater to acting, directing, and writing. Our playwrights have been finalists in regional and national writing competitions. In 2013, JCHS was the first international school to participate in London’s National Theatre New Views Young Playwrights Competition. JCHS was chosen as the top High School Theatre program in the Northwest by Stage Directions magazine and we were twice honored –in 2011 and 2017–to be selected out of hundreds of applicants in the U.S. and Canada to perform at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe. You can read more about our current and past productions here.
For Academic course information, visit our Curriculum page.
