Mad Grad Scholarship

At the young age of six years old, I played Wendy in my local summer camps production of Peter Pan. From the moment I stepped onto the stage I was hooked. I fell in love with performing. Throughout my life I have moved to different schools, played different sports and even different instruments. Yet, one constant always remained in my life, my passion for acting. Some people are blessed enough to figure out what they want to be when they grow up from a young age, I was not one of those people. I grew up performing everywhere I could, community theatre, school theatre, in my living room, shower concerts, you name it. Unfortunately, like so many other people in this world I viewed an acting career as a dream, not something I could actually pursue. That all changed when my high school director told me my freshmen year of high school that she went to college for a BFA in musical theatre and many more of students also have gone on to college BFA performing arts programs. From that moment forward I knew what I wanted to do. No place makes me feel more at home than on a stage. The arts have a beautiful ability to unite people, theatre can be used to share someone else's story, giving an audience member a chance to walk out with a new perspective on a situation they have never thought of before. Not to mention the "escape" it provides for both performers and audience members. No an actor does not save lives everyday like ER doctors, but it gives them a funny show to watch when they get home. Everyday I wake up extremely grateful that I get to pursue my passion as my career. Today, as a student at Syracuse University, I have taken my acting training to the next level with a BFA in Acting. My ambition is to grace the stages of national tours, regional theaters, and even Broadway, while also making a mark in television and film. I am driven by the desire to portray characters that resonate deeply with audiences and to be part of compelling stories that inspire and entertain. The advancements in modern technology, from AI to digital art, are reshaping the creative landscape. While these tools offer new possibilities, I believe that the core of acting—human connection and emotional authenticity—remains irreplaceable. Trying to figure out the future, one just needs to look at the past. As part of my course work I have to take a class called "drama in context" this class talks about history in the context of different historical time periods. I have learned what theatre was like dating all the way back to Ancient Greece. In Ancient Greece theatre was a way of praising the gods, in the 1870s there was an emergence of realism in theatre because people wanted to see people like them on stage. During the Golden age of Broadway, most musicals were up beat with happy tap dancing numbers because people needed something happy to look forward to during the Great Depression. The arts have been around for a very long time, its how and why that changes. That is what will happen in the future, their might be a shift from hand made sets to screens, there may be an increase in films due to advancements in camera technology. The arts is not going away, it may simply shift. I am prepared to shift with it. No matter what man made art will never lose it's value because the fact that it was man made is exactly why it is valuable. My goal is to work with talented collaborators to create performances that are both innovative and deeply rooted in the emotional truths of human experience. Whether on stage or on screen, I aim to bring characters to life in ways that resonate with audiences, continually pushing the boundaries of my craft while preserving the spirit of storytelling that first inspired me. In summary, my “why” is driven by a profound love for acting and a commitment to telling stories that matter. This passion fuels my journey and motivates me to continually evolve as an artist, embracing new opportunities while honoring the timeless art of performance.

Some would say that the almost apocalyptic state of the world would be enough to make someone not want to pursue the arts, would make them want to give up and throw themselves by the wayside. But for me, the state of the world is enough to make me want to make more art, to connect with more people, to bring about comfort for some and take it away from others by talking about issues that often go ignored. I feel it is my job, as a writer, to elevate the voices of those who are often silenced. I write stories about characters that aren't real and place them in situations that are: queer characters experiencing discrimination in their communities; Black characters facing decades of trauma; female characters being abused at the hands of abusive men, and vice versa; and so on. What keeps me going is the silencing, the injustice, the rage and the emptiness that comes when you are exposed to such things -- the pain can be overbearing that the only thing you can do is do something about it, and that thing is art. Art tells the stories we don't want to hear, the ones we need to hear. I want to make art that tells my story, stories that others may not have ever heard. Given that nowadays, artificial intelligence is making ground and taking over the world, is more important than ever, to me, to continue to tell real human experiences. I don't want to tell stories about total perfection, about everything going right, or even stories with one hundred percent perfect grammar. I want the messiness, I want the truth, because that is human. I don't want to live in a world where the stories we read are fake, made up by a generated robot that can feel nothing. I want humanity, I want realness. One of the books I am working on is about a pastor who falls in love with a man, and then has to deal with the inner turmoil and obstacles that naturally come along with being a queer Christian. He has to experience discrimination from his family and community and to come face to face with God and himself as he finally deals with this part of himself, a part he has been suppressing for so long. This book is an example of the type of stories I wish to convey -- unheard of, but real, and special to me. It's important to me to uplift those who need it the most, because by doing that, I am possibly uplifting the next writer who will likely write about experiences that even I haven't heard of. There's a whole world of stories out there to be told, some good, some bad, and they all deserve to be told

My name is Micheli Oliver and I am a photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer, writer and hobbyist painter and sketcher. Everything that I do in this life revolves around two things, art and story. I feel drawn to telling stories with art, my medium is motion picture and stills, but I find value in the sharing of the human experience with all forms of art. My personal story began as a little kid, feeling like many kids do, a complete misfit. I remember watching a Christmas movie and seeing the island of misfit toys and feeling akin to them in many ways. As a kid I began to read fantasy books, write stories and paint, it made me feel connected to a world I could imagine, a world where misfits fit in and where you can be anything you want to be. I wrote story after story of a magical world where a misfit kid found their way home. I painted with swirls and bright colors imagining a place that was bright and joyful. The art of creative writing and painting brought me closer to myself and soon I found that what I needed was an outlet for imagination. Imagining a better and more just future through story became my goal and a career soon began to unfold. I got the opportunity to tell stories through the imagery of people with bright imaginations and radical passions for a better world. I told stories with Indigenous leaders, Black activists, Queer spokespeople and everyone in between. As a queer person, myself, I began to feel a little less misfit in this world through my career and the stories and images I was given the privilege to create. With that old Christmas story in mind, my tagline for much of my professional works has been "misfit stories of truth and joy." I live by that sentence and the stories I work to create focus on just that the misfit stories that are not often told that highlight truth, whether it's ugly or not and the joy that we preserve to find. With my photography work, I've meshed together art and activism, story and beauty, technology and environment. Each photo I make and film I dream up, is designed to show the beauty of the human experience and our deep connection to the world around us. Through story and art, I want to bring people back to the land, disconnected kids to the mountains, and mentally ill folks to the ocean, I want to highlight how much people rely on place and the earth. With my design degree, I hope to step into the world of creative design and story producing for major motion pictures. I want to research the ways we have cultivated inherent bias through media and then change that bias through informed media and design choices. I want to work toward films that make misfit kids feel as if they fit and make artistic media that makes the world a better place. More specifically it is my dream to produce stories like the movie "Whale Rider" a story of Indigenous resistance and non-conformity. Currently, I'm working on a short documentary that is called "Selkie" which is the story of a mixed-ethnicity woman in Scotland who is a cold water surfer. This story is exactly the kinds of stories I want to tell, those that revolve around misfit people, with many intermixed identities connecting with the world around them.

My name is Aaron Mentzer, a cartoonist/illustrator and designer from Pennsylvania. From an early age, I've had the goal of working in the arts professionally, creating images, stories, and characters, taking concepts from my mind and making them real, and visual, something that can be absorbed and experienced by others. Writing, cartooning, designing, visual arts, these are things I can't live without, and want to share with others, creating stories and characters that can entertain others, tell tales that resonate with them and inspire their imaginations, to express what's in my mind to the world at large. A goal of mine is to create a studio, to partner with other artists and creatives like myself to make their ideas, their stories, and their art visible to the world to tell the tales they want to tell and to express visually interesting and compelling narratives. This can be anything from short gag strips to comic books on the stands full-blown graphic novels in the printed form, and animation and storyboards in the animated form. Fiction, however, is not all I have an interest in, as other commercial avenues of art interest me and that I've had past experience with, which I wish to continue pursuing. One such example would be morale patch designs, sticker designs, and general artwork created for and with the intent of supporting public services, like Emergency Medical Services and other such first responder groups, medical professionals, and humanitarian aid organizations. And on the small scale, teaching and instructing others, helping them along their artistic journies, is something that I've had a recent interest in, tutoring some of my peers to help them in their studies. Currently, I'm attending The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, a trade school focused on training students in commercial art, sequential art, painting, comic book production, and elements of graphic design and storytelling. I'm in my second year of the three-year curriculum, preparing to enter my third year in the fall. My third year will be my most important and is key to entering the creative field, preparing my portfolio, meeting with professionals in the field, and gearing up to enter the workforce. Part of maximizing my opportunities to expand my creative avenues and pursue the goals that I wish to accomplish includes having the financial liberty to explore riskier ventures, and not play it safe with my goals and aims. Accomplishments are built on risk, but the reward is always worth the gamble, and the potential of failure. Better to pursue a goal and falter than never try.