Public Relations

NWACC drama student accepted to select school

            BENTONVILLE (Monday, Feb. 18, 2008) – NWACC freshman theater student Ellie Metz has been accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for the Fall 2008 session. After a school tour and audition at the school’s Manhattan campus in January 24, her acceptance letter arrived 10 days later.

            “I was amazed both that the letter came so soon, and that I was actually accepted.” Metz said. “The student tour guide who showed my mom and I around the school told us how difficult it is to get into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA), and that it usually takes at least a month to find  out whether or not you made it.”

            Founded in 1884, AADA is the first American Conservatory completely dedicated to the training of professional actors.  AADA alumni hold a total of more than 72 Oscar, 211 Emmy, and 60 Tony nominations plus 5 Kennedy Center Honorees.

            Graduates include the likes of Cecil B. DeMille, Spencer Tracy, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Jason Robards, Grace Kelly, Robert Redford, Danny Devito, Anne Bancroft, Kim Cattrall, Adrian Brody, and Paul Rudd, as well as many other well known actors.

            Metz was bitten by the stage bug as a very small child, she said.

            “My mom has a picture of me at around the age of 2 wearing only a diaper and singing into a toy microphone,” she said. “She loves to show it to my friends to embarrass me.

            “I began dance class at the age of 3, and from that time on, I’ve lived to perform.”

            Prior to re-locating with her family from Jackson, Miss., to Eureka Springs 3 years ago, she was in several community theater productions.  After her move to Northwest Arkansas, she was a wardrobe intern in the film crew of the movie War Eagle, which was shot in and around Eureka Springs and Huntsville in August and September of 2006. 

            Metz also was “drafted” into the position of film double for the lead female during the shoot. 

            In March of 2007 she landed the role of “Lilly Darling” the cute town librarian in the independent horror/comedy/noir film Arkane produced by Dissolve Pictures, LLC, a local Fayetteville film production company.  

            Both films are currently in post production and will be released sometime this year.

            A 2007 graduate of Clear Springs High School in Eureka Springs, she played the role of “Regan” in the NWACC Drama Department production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, directed by Marc Turner.  

            Last Semester she was cast as “Brenda” the bratty cousin in the department’s production of A Child’s Christmas in Wales

            “I wasn’t ready to leave for New York City right out of high school,” she said. “The NWACC theater program has been a great place to spend a year, make a bunch of friends, get some basics out of the way, and work on the thing that I love.”

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