News
Bachelor’s Completion Program Graduate Shares International Theater HonorJul 9 2009
Jessa Brie Berkner, a recent graduate of CIIS’s Bachelor of Arts Completion Program and current MFA student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Studies Program, was honored by having the high school drama department she heads selected for an international theater festival. Berkner directs the drama department at Oakland Technical High School, and her program was invited to perform at the celebrated Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland in August 2010.
Berkner credits her education at CIIS for playing a critical role in helping her students achieve this prestigious honor. “To create the play that was selected by the festival, I taught the Oakland Tech students the research-based inquiry that I learned in the Integral Studies program at CIIS,” says Berkner. “The students used the tools of an anthropologist to go into their community and research what became a full-length play.”
Oakland Tech was selected to travel to Edinburgh as one of the fifty best high school drama departments in the United States. They will perform in the American High School Theatre Festival (AHSTF) in the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, part of the world-famous performing arts celebration that takes place each summer in that Scottish city. “For an inner-city public high school to be represented at a topnotch international theater program is such an achievement for the students, for our school, and for our city,” says Oakland Tech student Molly Katz.
Two thousand high school drama programs were nominated to apply for participation in AHSTF. Although six Oakland schools have received invitations to the Fringe Festival in the past, Oakland Tech is the first public school from that city to be invited to Edinburgh. Of the four Bay Area high schools selected this year, Berkner’s program at Oakland Tech is the only one from a public school.
Oakland Technical High School drama students need to raise significant funds to finance their participation in the Fringe Festival. For more information, contact Ms. Berkner at jessabrie@gmail.com or visit www.oaklandtech.com.
