A lively debate about success versus fame arose at a press event held in conjunction with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts' annual week of classes and other enrichment activities in NYC for top-ranked teen performers and artists. The 37 Gold and Silver finalists in the NFAA's YoungArts program who spent last week in New York for "In the Studio/Out of the Studio" also had opportunities to perform or exhibit their work as well as do outreach with local high schoolers. Broadway's Bill T. Jones and Santino Fontana participated in the press event on Thursday morning—Jones representing the acclaimed professionals who teach YoungArts master classes and Fontana as a former student in the program. Also in attendance was another former YoungArts participant, Abdi Farah, who last year won the Bravo reality show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.
"This isn't National Foundation for Advancement of Celebrity or Advancement of Success. It's Advancement of the Arts, which is a different thing," said Fontana, who participated in YoungArts as a high school student and is currently costarring on Broadway in The Importance of Being Earnest. "When arts are successful or entertaining, that's great, but when they're not, they can be just as valuable. There has to be a sacred space around that. I've auditioned with Kushner in the room and that's been a sacred experience. And then I've gone and had a pilot audition for some terrible piece of sh-- where 30 people are judging me and I don't get it because I look 'too ethnic.' [And I'm wondering,] What am I doing?"
Concurring, Jones remarked: "We have a problem right now, which is we are living in a culture which is completely celebrity-driven. That's where the culture is: 'I want to be famous,' as opposed to participate in a world of ideas." Fontana came back with "To admit that you're an artist is saying that you have aspirations beyond just stardom or success or fame. And that's a scary thing to say, because it's harder to quantify."
Farah, a painter and sculptor, commented: "What all of us want in our lives is a relevance. People are drawn to certain concrete forms of recognition, like magazines or fame, because that's what our society is proclaiming is relevant. Society doesn't proclaim visual arts as such."
While reality television is equated with the celebrity that the conversation was generally disdaining, Fontana noted that it does have some value to his art. "I think reality TV is changing acting in a great way," said the Drama Desk Award winner (for last season's Brighton Beach Memoirs), "because now we can see real people going through something and not being trained how to express it. Which is more truthful than watching someone who's been trained to express, express something. But because we have such access, there is no sacred space. If there's nobody fostering artists, we're all going to be sucked to the most popular thing—whoever has the most hits on YouTube."
Jones, the Tony-winning choreographer of Fela! and Spring Awakening, is one of the YoungArts master teachers—along with Edward Albee, Liv Ullmann, Jacques d'Amboise, Plácido Domingo, Julian Schnabel, Frank Gehry, Michael Tilson Thomas and Olafur Eliasson—featured in Masterclass, a nine-part documentary about the NFAA program that premiered on HBO in April 2010. Jones also received the Arison Award at the NFAA's 30th anniversary gala in Washington, D.C., last January for his work with young artists.
The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts was established in 1981 by Lin Arison and her late husband, Ted, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines. Each year it selects 148 students from approximately 5,000 applicants to attend YoungArts, a week of instruction, enrichment and networking held in Miami. Gold and Silver finalists who participate in the NYC week are selected from that group. The finalists also receive $5,000 or $10,000 cash prizes and are eligible to be nominated by the NFAA as Presidential Scholars in the Arts. Fontana was a Presidential Scholar in 2000.
"What the arts can mean to America's young people and what America's young people can mean to the arts—that's a conversation we supposedly have all the time in this country, but in fact I don't think we talk about it nearly enough. We certainly don't do enough," Arison said in addressing the press last week.
