JIMMYS BLOG: Meet a Nominee from the Roger Rees Awards, Jeremy Fuentes!

This year, a record 86 high school students from across America will participate in The Jimmy Awards, competing for Best Performance by an Actor and Actress as well as other honors and scholarships at the eleventh annual awards ceremony on Monday, June 24.

Jimmy Awards nominees will prepare for their debut on a Broadway stage during a nine-day professional training intensive with NYU Tisch School of the Arts' New Studio on Broadway faculty members plus other theatre professionals. Winners will be selected by a panel of industry experts. Student performers qualify to compete in the national program by winning top honors at regional high school musical theatre awards competitions presented by Broadway League member performing arts centers. Over 1,700 high schools and 100,000 students participate in these annual events.

BroadwayWorld is bringing you the inside scoop on this year's Jimmy Awards with student blogger Jeremy Fuentes- a nominee from New York's Roger Rees Awards. Earlier this year, he won the title of Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Calogero in Archbishop Stepinac High School's A Bronx Tale.

Read Jeremy's first entry below!

Monday has been an incredible day. We started off by a wonderful introduction of the team and then ourselves. We got right into the opening number and started learning pretty quickly the materials. At my break, I got interviewed by ABC7 which was amazing because I've never had an interview before. They told me how I can look for myself on TV tomorrow which is pretty insane. After that we went back into the theatre and worked on the opening number again.

Relatively towards the end of the day, they brought in two special guests which I was ecstatic to see. Andrew Barth Feldman and Alex Lacamoire. The Jimmys had us sing You'll Be Found with the two and it was such an amazing time. Just being there with a former winner turned star and a Tony and Grammy award winning musician truly was inspiring.

After singing, we were allowed to ask questions to the two stars and I believe we all learned a lot from only a 10 to 15 minute Q&A. Afterwards we worked on the opening number a little bit more but then we left back to the dorms and I finally got to unpack. It's been a pretty eventful day if I do say so myself.