![]() ![]() “ Usher's New Look is about transforming the lives of youth, so they become passion-driven global leaders who change the world. She indicated that initially she thought she would be designing building structures, but that she found her passion in civil engineering and infrastructure. Shakiesha credits the DDC STEAM team with having mentored her to her present position. She also spoke about the importance of finding mentors that can help guide and encourage you along the way. Shakiesha spoke to the students about how she found her spark, the importance of internships and what she had learned through her many internships. Shakiesha has a BS in Civil Engineering with a minor in environmental engineering. DDC High School Summer Internship Program, and DDC College Intern alumnus Shakiesha Featherstone spoke to New Look students about her journey as a public school student from East Flatbush, to recent college graduate, to her career as a civil infrastructure engineer. The summer program had the theme: Connecting STEM to the Arts through Imagination, Creativity and Innovation. The foundation reached out to STEAM to request a career day presentation to launch the first session of Usher’s Virtual Summer Academy. Students who participate in Usher's New Look go on to Higher Education or Job Placement. The program, which starts in the 8th grade and progresses through high school and college, has four basic pillars: Talent, Education, Service, and Career Readiness. Usher founded New Look to provide teens from under resourced communities with a new look on life through education and real-world experiences. On May 29, 2020, DDC STEAM partnered with Usher’s New Look Foundation, which was launched by singer, songwriter, actor, and businessman Usher Raymond IV. Jackson, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on writing from the inside out.Usher's New Look Virtual Summer Academy: Session 1 I hope that we get to a point where that is more celebrated and that that is more commonplace. My hopes for the theater and film space is that people start in their art and in the work that has been produced looking more inward and being a little bit more rigorous with themselves and more truthful. And both of those experiences live alongside each other and actually feed each other. And for those people, they're peering through a window. I often talk about how "A Strange Loop" for some people is a window and for other people it's a mirror, because there are those who watch the story of "A Strange Loop," and they see themselves in it.įor other people, they're not fat, they're not gay, they're not queer, they're not any of the things that Usher is on the outside, but, internally, they feel a kinship with him. My perspective on "A Strange Loop" changed in a lot of ways over the years, because sort of, as I evolved, the piece evolved. ![]() I'm 42 years old.įrom the start of the monologue to Broadway with "A Strange Loop" was 18 years. But our stories are also different, in that Usher is eternally 25 years old, going on 26. My experience has aligned with Usher in a lot of basic ways, in that I am a fat Black gay man, and I have had struggles with my family over my sexuality in the past. Usher is the protagonist of "A Strange Loop." And he is writing a musical about someone named Usher, who is writing a musical out someone named Usher, who is writing a musical about someone Usher, ad infinitum. I just started writing this kind of thinly veiled personal monologue that was just about a young Black gay man walking around New York wondering why life is so terrible. I just was trying to figure out where my place in the world would be sort of personally and artistically. I didn't know how I was going to pay any of my bills. I still hadn't really fully found my voice. "A Strange Loop" began as a monologue that I started writing shortly after I graduated from undergrad living in Jamaica, Queens. Jackson, Playwright and Composer: When I sit down to write, my ultimate goal is to find the truth and to figure out how to harness that truth in a way that the audience that I don't know will be able to perceive and to feel. Tonight, he shares his Brief But Spectacular view, as part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. Jackson is a Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwright and composer. ![]()
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