Columbia College Chicago Theatre Students to be Featured in International Arts Festival

The NEW NOW Festival 2015, sponsored by the European League of Institutes for the Arts (ELIA), will feature the work of students from the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department. These current and recently graduated Theatre students from Chicago are the only American artists selected for this prestigious, competitive juried showcase of cutting-edge performance, which runs September 9-13 in Amsterdam at the historic Westergasfabriek Culture Park.

Performing in front of an international audience of artists, arts educators and arts journalists, the Room | 916 Collective, an ensemble of Columbia College Chicago students and alumni, will showcase two different performance pieces: United States of Amnesia, performed live at the festival; and The Wonderers and Other Stories, which will be showcased in video as part of the NEW NOW Festival's online component.

"We're excited to be taking the work ethic and aesthetic of Chicago theatre and sharing it with the international arts community," said Jeff Ginsberg, Coordinator of the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department's Acting Program, who facilitated the student projects and submitted them for consideration by ELIA.

The European League of Institutes of the Arts is the primary independent network organization for higher arts education in Europe. The NEW NOW Festival offers "an innovative international platform for talented graduating artists (or those who have recently graduated)-coming out of Higher Arts Education Institutions and Universities across Europe and beyond-to present themselves to a wider international audience within a professional arts context. The Festival features the most excellent new artists now entering the professional arts arenas and is an international showcase for emerging creative talent."