Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12 (CAPA) is a

magnet school In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. Normally, a student will attend an elementary school, and this also determines the middle school and high school they attend unless they mo ...

located in the Cultural District of

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. CAPA is one of four 6th to 12th grade schools in the

Pittsburgh Public Schools Pittsburgh Public Schools is the public school district serving the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and adjacent Mount Oliver, Pennsylvania. As of the 2021–2022 school year, the district operates 54 schools with 4,192 employees (2,070 teach ...

. It was formed from a merger between CAPA High School and Rogers CAPA Middle School. CAPA offers students seven art majors:

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

literary arts Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...

, production technology,

instrumental music An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer t ...

vocal music Vocal music is a type of singing performed by one or more singers, either with instrumental accompaniment, or without instrumental accompaniment (a cappella), in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which employs singing but ...

, and

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

. The theater major includes traditional theater and

musical theater Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, moveme ...

. The Instrumental department is composed of Instrumental and Piano Majors. Arts classes are taught by adjunct faculty who are working

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who work (human activity), works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the partic ...

s in their fields. Admission is by

portfolio Portfolio may refer to: Objects * Portfolio (briefcase), a type of briefcase Collections * Portfolio (finance), a collection of assets held by an institution or a private individual * Artist's portfolio, a sample of an artist's work or a ...

audition An audition is a sample performance by an actor, singer, musician, dancer or other performer. It typically involves the performer displaying their talent through a previously memorized and rehearsed solo piece or by performing a work or piece gi ...

. The school offers academic studies including Pittsburgh Scholars Program (PSP) and Centers for Advanced Study (CAS), along with activities like the

National Honor Society The National Honor Society (NHS) is one of the oldest, largest, and most widely recognized cocurricular student organizations in American high schools, with 1.4 million members. The purpose of the NHS is to create enthusiasm for scholarship, to ...

, Tri-M Music Honor Society,

National Art Honor Society The National Art Honor Society (NAHS) is an American honor society for high school students. It was established in 1978 by the National Art Education Association (NAEA) to recognize outstanding accomplishments in the visual arts by students in grad ...

yearbook A yearbook, also known as an annual, is a type of Annual publication, a book published annually. One use is to record, highlight, and commemorate the past year of a school. The term also refers to a book of statistics or facts published annually ...

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

student council A student council (also known as a student union, associated student body or student parliament) is an administrative organization of students in different educational institutes ranging from elementary schools to universities and research or ...

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

Model United Nations Model United Nations, also known as Model UN (MUN), is an educational simulation of the United Nations, which teaches students about diplomacy, international relations, global issues, and how the United Nations is run. During a model UN confe ...

, the

American Mathematics Competitions The American Mathematics Competitions (AMCs) are the first of a series of competitions in secondary school mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that ...

and North American Computational Linguistics Open competition, and ski club. CAPA opened in September 1979 with 35 students, housed in Baxter Elementary School in the Homewood neighborhood. While in Homewood, CAPA only housed grades 9-12, while arts students in grades 6-8 were at Rogers Middle School. The school moved into its current space at Ninth Street and

Fort Duquesne Fort Duquesne ( , ; originally called ''Fort Du Quesne'') was a fort established by the French in 1754, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It was later taken over by the British, and later the Americans, and developed ...

Boulevard at the beginning of the 2003–2004 school year. The 11-story, includes a 400-seat

auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoriums can be found in entertainment venues, community halls, and t ...

, a

black box theater A black box theater is a performance space, typically a square or rectangular room, with black walls and a black, flat floor. The simplicity of the space allows it to be used to create a variety of configurations of stage and audience interact ...

, a

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, casino, hotel, restaurant, or nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, ...

theater, an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

, media arts center,

television studio A television studio, also called a television production studio, is an installation room in which video productions take place, either for the production of live television and its recording onto video tape or other media such as SSDs, or for ...

, fitness center, computer labs, and rehearsal spaces for the departments. This location allows students to study their craft in the hub of Pittsburgh's cultural center and to collaborate with artists from all over. Pittsburgh CAPA has become one of four 6–12 schools in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Enrollment

As of October 1, 2018:

Literary arts

The literary arts program at CAPA is a seven-year course of study in creative writing — one of only a dozen nationwide. Student activities include the national Poetry Out Loud competition, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Visual arts

Students in the Visual Arts Department learn painting, drawing, sculpting, ceramics, printmaking,

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

, art history, and fiber arts. Student work is displayed around the school as well as on the Astrovision (Jumbo-Tron). The Astrovision display has since broken, and has not been repaired.

Dance

The mission of the Dance Department is to provide a comprehensive and quality dance education in an environment that nurtures the talent of each individual dancer. Emphasis is placed on refining and enhancing dance technique while simulating creativity.

Theatre

Drama/Musical Theatre. The theatre department provides a four-year structured course in musical theatre and drama. Every year the musical theatre students perform two recitals and the All School Musical.

Instrumental music

Classes available to instrumental music majors include orchestra, wind ensemble, string orchestra, chamber music ensembles, various jazz bands, music/jazz theory, music history, piano lab, and solfege. Each student normally receives a private lesson once every two weeks with a faculty member specializing on his/her instrument.

Piano

Piano students learn techniques, piano history, new genres of music, play in ensembles, have private piano lessons, and are classically trained. They have a piano recital every year along with other performances in collaboration with the Instrumental department.

Production Technology

The Pro-Tech major gives students the opportunity to learn engineering techniques and the fundamentals of building sets for theatre shows. They act as crew for recitals, performances, and musicals.

Vocal music

The Voice Department offers students education through its sequential four-year curriculum, through collaborative work with professional music organizations, and through performance opportunities and Master Classes. Students in grades 9–12 receive a private voice lesson every other week. Students will perform in Concert Choir, Jazz Choir, and Chamber Ensemble. Students participate in the Opera Workshop class and perform in the yearly Opera. Other classes include: music theory, piano lab, music history, solfeggio, eurhythmics, Studio Class, and the creative music technology class. Each Friday, students perform in a recital for their peers studying vocal music. They showcase songs that they work on in private lessons with the staff.

Athletics

CAPA offers unified track and bocce students may also play at their home school for all other high school sports. The 6–8 students do have sports teams. They have a boys and girls

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

, girls

softball Softball is a Variations of baseball, variation of baseball, the difference being that it is played with a larger ball, on a smaller field, and with only underhand pitches (where the ball is released while the hand is primarily below the ball) ...

and boys

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

. The girls soccer team was an undefeated section champion in 2004. The CAPA 6–8 sports teams mascot is the

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

changed from the phoenix in 2012, changed from the

in 2011.

Notable alumni

* Billy Porter (Tony Award winner for his role as Lola in the Broadway show Kinky Boots) (Emmy award winner for his role as Pray Tell in the television show Pose) * Reba Meyers, Jami Morgan and Joe Goldman (members of the metalcore band Code Orange and rock band

Adventures An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme s ...

) * Chirag Manohar, best known as Cheech Manohar (Broadway and Film actor of

Mean Girls (musical) ''Mean Girls'' is a rock musical with a book by Tina Fey, lyrics by Nell Benjamin, and music by Jeff Richmond. It is based on the Mean Girls, 2004 film by Mark Waters, which was also written by Fey and was in turn inspired by Rosalind Wiseman's ...

and Dead Boy Detectives (TV series) *

Margot Bingham Margot Bingham is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She is best known for her role as jazz singer Daughter Maitland in the HBO period drama series, '' Boardwalk Empire''. In 2015, Bingham began starring as one of lead characters in the ...

(actor in television show

Boardwalk Empire ''Boardwalk Empire'' is an American period crime drama television series created by Terence Winter for the premium cable channel HBO. The series is set chiefly in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era of the 1920s. The series sta ...

) *

Leo Pellegrino Leonardo Antonio Pellegrino, also known as Leo P, is an American baritone saxophonist from Pittsburgh who is based in New York City. He is a member of the "brass house" band Too Many Zooz and former member of the Lucky Chops brass band. He is ...

, known professionally as Leo P (baritone saxophonist and member of Too Many Zooz) * Noa Denmon (illustrator and winner of

Caldecott Honor The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service ...

in 2021) * Shannon Dailey, professionally known for her work in Production Design and Miniature Fabrication on movies such as

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood ''A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'' is a 2019 American biographical film, biographical drama (film and television), drama film on the TV presenter Fred Rogers, directed by Marielle Heller and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster ...

starring Tom Hanks, and the television series Mindhunter.

References

External links

Pittsburgh CAPA 6–12 website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pittsburgh High School For The Creative And Performing Arts Educational institutions established in 1979 High schools in Pittsburgh Magnet schools in Pennsylvania Schools of the performing arts in the United States Public high schools in Pennsylvania Public middle schools in Pennsylvania 1979 establishments in Pennsylvania