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Eastside Prep runs fine and performing arts across music, visual arts and theatre for all students in grades 5 through 12, with requirements that vary by grade level so every student encounters more than one discipline. Visual arts progress from introductory courses to printmaking, graphic design and digital filmmaking, supported by a media production studio. Theatre runs from introductory acting to student directing. Productions include a Middle School show, an Upper School show and an all-school musical.
How the Arts Are Structured at Eastside Prep
The arts at Eastside Prep are not an elective bolted onto the academic day. Fine and performing arts sit alongside English, mathematics, science, social science, Spanish, technology and physical education as a core discipline, and grade-level requirements are set so that students meet more than one art form rather than specializing at eleven and never looking sideways again.
That structure has a practical consequence worth understanding before you apply. A student who arrives certain they are a musician will still spend time in a visual arts or theatre classroom, and the school treats that as the point rather than an inconvenience.
Music
Music courses span skill levels, and performance classes build toward concerts for the school community. Students also perform at assemblies and school events, and can extend their work through the Washington Music Educators Association Solo and Ensemble contests. Chamber Music Ensemble and Chamber Choir involve a separate placement process completed before the academic year begins, which is worth knowing if your child plays seriously and would want to continue at that level immediately.
Visual Arts and the Media Production Studio
The visual arts curriculum covers both two-dimensional and three-dimensional media and leans deliberately toward contemporary practice, which in this school means digital work sits beside drawing rather than beneath it. Students have access to a media production studio equipped with professional cameras, a green screen, portrait backdrops, a lighting grid, and film and music production software.
| Grades | Visual arts course offerings |
| 5 and 6 | The Magic of Art, Mixed Media, Art Meets Tech |
| 7 and 8 | Drawing and Painting, Digital Storytelling, Mixed Media |
| 9 through 12 | Mixed Media, Paper Engineering, Printmaking, Drawing and Painting 1 and 2, Graphic Design 1 and 2, Digital Photography, Digital Filmmaking, Digital Illustration |
Paper Engineering is the course that tends to catch parents’ attention, and reasonably so. It is the sort of offering that only exists at a school willing to let a discipline be strange, and it is one reason Eastside Prep comes up when families ask about schools for creatively gifted children.
Is your child an artist applying to Eastside Prep?
A word of caution: Eastside Prep does not accept supplementary portfolios and will not show them to the admissions committee. We can help your child convey their artistic life within the application the school actually reads.
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Theatre, and the Productions That Anchor the Year
Theatre runs as a progression rather than a set of standalone electives. Middle School students begin with Introduction to Theatre, acting courses and Playing Shakespeare, move into One Acts and stagecraft in seventh and eighth grade, and in the Upper School work through Acting 1 and 2 into directing and Upper School stagecraft. Directing is the endpoint, and it means students realizing their own artistic vision rather than executing someone else’s.
After-school productions are audition-based and open onto more than performance: set and lighting design, and backstage crew, are genuine routes in. The production calendar typically runs a Middle School show in the fall, an Upper School show in the winter, and an all-school musical in the spring that spans grades 5 through 12. Auditions require no prior experience and no prepared piece, and callbacks signal that a director needs more information rather than that a student is close to a role.
What This Means for Your Application
Two practical points. First, do not send a portfolio, a recording or a certificate. Eastside Prep explicitly declines supplementary materials and states that they will not be made visible to the committee, so an artistic child has to convey their artistic life through the 250-word essay, the interests and activities form and the recorded assessment. Second, the school’s breadth requirement means a committee reading a narrowly specialized applicant may quietly wonder about fit. Showing range, or at least curiosity beyond one medium, works in your child’s favor here.
If your child has been serious about an art form for years, the strongest thing they can do in 250 words is explain what a specific problem in that art taught them, rather than list what they have achieved in it.
Make the application sound like your child
We help artistically serious students say something real in a very small number of words.
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