Visual & Performing Arts
The Visual and Performing Arts Department provides many creative experiences in visual art, music, and theatre. By offering a diverse range of curricular courses and co-curricular activities the department aims to encourage and empower students to become bold, creative, and thoughtful artists.
Participation in the Visual and Performing Arts is a way for students to learn more about themselves, others, and the world around them, to live our mission by sharing human interaction through artistic endeavors, and to nurture and value creativity and the creative mind.
Music
Theatre
Each year, NDA's International Thespian Troupe #7966 presents three fully staged productions. Fall opens with the collaboration between our music and theatre departments to mount a musical; past shows include The Wizard of Oz, Legally Blonde, and Les Miserables.
Winter at NDA Theatre means the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild Festival, a one act play competition involving over 100 schools from across the state! Our avant garde staging of Medea in 2016 brought us to the State Finals! Winding down the year is our spring straight play, most recently You Can’t Take It With You, Sense and Sensibility, Anne of Green Gables, and A MidSummer Night’s Dream.
Students in grades 7-12 can participate in the musical, and students in 9-12 are eligible for all shows.
Visual Arts
In the Visual Arts, students in grades seven through twelve have the opportunity to make art in either two-dimensional or three-dimensional media. Students have the opportunity to work either in the Art Studio or Ceramics Studio. Students have access to the latest versions of Adobe Creative, a quality printer, large format printer for photographs and artist works, a monotype press for printmaking, Kiln room with an electric kiln.
Each student participating in the visual arts has their work displayed in the Winter and Spring Art Shows. Students are encouraged to compete in a variety of shows and competitions, such as the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Art All State, and Congressional Art Competition. Also, there is an annual field trip for students to visit and explore art museums in Massachusetts.
