Rosebud School of the Arts celebrates student achievement

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Rosebud School of the Arts celebrated another year of accomplishments at the 2015 ROSAs (Recognizing Outstanding Student Achievement), Sept. 27, with an afternoon ceremony and six-course banquet.
Four students graduated as Fellows of Rosebud School of the Arts (FRSAs) after four years of study. Seven students earned two-year diplomas and ten students received one-year certificates. More than forty scholarships, worth $52,000, were also given out.
Paul Muir, Education Director, welcomed the FRSAs into full membership in Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA) guild, affirming that they’re now peers with their instructors. He reminded them there’d be a rare full eclipse of a supermoon that evening, and joked that, to confirm the event was especially for graduates of Rosebud, it would glow red, like a rose.
Pastor Phil Wright from Edmonton challenged the graduates, referring to King Nebuchadnezzar who forced his artisans to build a statue in his glory. Wright cautioned the new FRSAs they too may be pressured to use their talents to feed others’ power, but he encouraged them to speak to people for their benefit instead. He wished them love deeper than fear, redemption greater than vision, and reconciliation greater than envy, and a particular solidarity with “the least of these.”
Each FRSA graduate was also honored with a slide show and a personalized speech from her faculty advisor. The music group Three Roses and a Thorn, who joined in 1999 to sing dinner music in the Mercantile but disbanded in 2001, reunited especially for this year’s ROSAs, singing at both ceremony and banquet.
After the ROSAs, I heard from each new FRSA. Jenny Daigle said personal growth was the greatest highlight of her time in Rosebud.
“Your mentors are also your friends, are also your teachers,” she said, and they all played a role in helping her grow.
“It was intense and taxing but the fact that I went through it, it gave me strength. Now I feel like I have the strength to do anything.”
Daigle is acting in Vancouver with a company called Small Wonders. In December, she’ll work in the Calgary area, bringing theatre to local schools. Her long-term interests include stage combat and lighting.
Naomi Esau emailed that a highlight of her Rosebud time was “the feeling of home and family,” and the one-on-one mentorship experience most helped her grow.
“I was always surrounded by people I admired and who also treated me as an equal,” she said. “I grew as a performer and a person from that one-on-one mentorship.”
Esau is Assistant Stage Manager for Calgary Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet. She recently danced in New Blood and will act at Heritage Park’s Ghouls’ Night Out. She plans to pursue acting and stage management roles across Canada.
For Alysa Glenn, it was most important to find what she values as an artist.
“I aspire to create art that empowers healing and connection,” she wrote. Her greatest victory was producing her final project, based on experience with depression and anxiety.
“I was able to turn a very difficult, confusing and dark time of my life into a piece of art that has touched other people’s lives,” she said.
She’s preparing to perform that show in venues throughout Alberta.
“My hope is to facilitate the space for others to talk about their own struggles with mental illness and shine another small light into that vast darkness,” she said.
Brynn Linsey e-mailed that performing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the greatest highlight. Through performing in Chickens and in Miracle Worker, she said, “I learned a great deal about what it is to be not only a performer but a person at work and in the world.”
She said Morris Ertman, artistic director, had a great impact on her growth. Linsey hopes to move to Toronto, but “I mostly am waiting to see where the world takes me,” she wrote, “and to start bushwhacking in whatever direction will help me get better at what I do.”
Meanwhile, Rosebud School of the Arts continues the 2015-2016 school year with 12 new students, and an enrolment of 30. They expect to graduate another five FRSAs into the guild next September.