Bill T. Jones, Santino Fontana Salute YoungArts

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.

Among the future stars who participated in the NFAA program as teenagers are Raúl Esparza, now on Broadway in Arcadia; film and stage actress Kerry Washington; and Adrian Grenier of Entourage. (Esparza and Washington have received alumni awards from the NFAA.) Alumni also include Weeds creator Jenji Kohan, novelist Allegra Goodman, opera singer Denyce Graves and six current members of the New York Philharmonic. "I love talking about alumni," said NFAA president Christina DePaul last week. "It's the one time I'm proud to say I'm a name-dropper."

Arison recently sold Monet and Modigliani paintings from her personal collection in a Sotheby's auction for $39 million and is putting all the money into YoungArts. "What this means is that we are on the verge of a breakthrough," she said. "We now have the means to expand the scope of our work dramatically and to serve many more young people across the country. We can't just increase the number of communities where we work or add to the number of our participants. We need to step up the conversation about young people and the arts, so at the end of the day it's not only about American Idol."

She added: "At a moment when young people are hearing about nothing but job scarcity and spending cuts, they desperately need vision and dreams. They need the arts. We can't abandon them now. Just the opposite: Now is the time for us to do more."

"We now have more than 16,000 alumni of YoungArts, the program where we identify extremely talented high school students and provide them with financial support and with life-changing experiences with master teachers and mentors," said Lin Arison (left), cofounder of the NFAA. The organization's president and CEO, Christina DePaul (right), said of YoungArts students: "They tell us...that one week had such an impact, because we gave them validation that yes, you are important as an artist."

Speaking for the master teachers of the NFAA, Bill T. Jones said, "They care for the kids so much, because in a way they're caring for an idea that the kids represent. And I think that replenishes us. Most of us who are middle-aged and who have been successful, there's a hardened sonofabitch in a lot of us. We're angry, we have petty grievances... But the kids give you permission to be gentle. You're not making points against critics. This is like trying to say everything that you would have liked to hear yourself. The kids in some ways help the heart, if not the eyes and minds."

Santino Fontana recalled his experience in YoungArts, including performing a monologue from The Seagull when everyone else did contemporary pieces and subsequently being asked by one of the judges, Ken Washington of the Guthrie Theater, about his college plans. He told Washington he was planning to attend the public university in his home state, to which Washington replied, "I think that'd be a mistake." Fontana thought Washington was implying he wasn't talented enough, but he actually meant he should go to a drama school. "I would not be doing what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, if he had not said, 'You're an actor,'" Fontana stated. "And that's one moment. If I hadn't been there for that week, I don't think I would have had the courage to recognize that I could do this." He said participating in the NFAA programs helped him "articulate all these ideas and all of these feelings that you feel about seeing art and seeing acting, stories you want to tell, characters you want to go to bat for, people whose lives you want to inhabit so you can tell their stories."

In discussing what constitutes success for an artist, Abdi Farah noted that while performers at least are present for the public's reaction to their work, "it's worse in the visual arts world, because at best our work isn't that 'entertaining.' Even if you're an art lover, you're not clapping or dancing." So he really appreciated the response he got at YoungArts from the performing-arts students. "When it got to our show, everyone's walking around and there's these high schoolers looking at art and, like, crying. [It made me feel] the stuff I'm doing is as relevant as these amazing dancers and these amazing actors who I'm sure are going to be on television and be on Broadway."

Applications are now being accepted for the 2012 YoungArts program. Students ages 17 and 18 can participate in one of nine disciplines: theater, dance, music, photography, writing, filmmaking, voice, jazz and visual arts. Go to www.youngarts.org for more information.