Michelle Hill and Elizabeth Schildkret

Theatre for youth doctoral candidates Michelle Hill and Elizabeth Schildkret were chosen from a nationally competitive pool to serve as Graduate Student Apprentices at the 25th anniversary of the New Visions/New Voices festival at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. earlier this year.

The biennial workshop and festival brings together playwrights, directors, dramaturgs and actors to create new plays and musicals specifically for young audiences. Hill and Schildkret joined a team of four graduate students working alongside Kennedy Center production staff to produce the festival. The graduate students helped produce six staged readings of new plays for young audiences with artists and theatre companies from the United States, as well as nine readings of plays by playwrights from Korea, India and South Africa.