Patina Miller won a Tony Award for Pippin in 2013. Nicole Beharie earned an Emmy nomination for The Morning Show. Danielle Brooks took home a Grammy for The Color Purple after Oscar, Emmy and Tony nominations. They share more than a region. All three trained as teenagers in a 'Tuscan village' rising on a bluff above the Reedy River in downtown Greenville, at a free public boarding school that South Carolina built when Virginia Uldrick refused to take no for an answer.
Uldrick was a music educator and Greenville district official when she first pitched a statewide summer arts program to Governor James Edwards in 1979. Edwards declined; the College of Charleston already ran something similar. Uldrick came back the next year with businessman Arthur Magill and superintendent J. Floyd Hall behind her, and on July 1, 1981, the first Governor's School session opened on the Furman University campus as a five-week summer program. It would take another eighteen years to convince the state to build a year-round residential high school. Bill 4036, sponsored by David Wilkins, finally passed the South Carolina House on June 15, 1994. Five cities lined up to host. The committee chose Greenville unanimously.
The 8.5-acre site overlooking Falls Park was donated jointly by the City and County of Greenville, negotiated by developer Bob Hughes and attorney C. Thomas Wyche. A capital campaign co-chaired by Minor Mickel Shaw and Mary Rainey Belser raised $14.5 million in private gifts to unlock $12 million from the state. The land had history: it once held the men's campus of Furman University, razed in 1958 for downtown redevelopment. An architectural competition went to Greenville's Freeman & Major Architects, who proposed a European artist village clustered around a north-facing courtyard and amphitheater. Ground broke May 11, 1998. On September 5, 1999, the first class of 126 students moved into the dormitory while construction continued around them. The arts-academic complex wouldn't finish until January 2000.
Tuition is free. Students live on campus in a residence hall designed to house up to 242. Mornings belong to academics taught at College Preparatory, Honors and AP levels - the same diploma anyone gets at a South Carolina high school. Afternoons belong to the studio: ballet drilled in Vaganova, Cecchetti and Royal Academy traditions; acting that draws on Michael Chekhov, Viola Spolin and Uta Hagen; visual art that cycles through ceramics, metals, printmaking and bronze casting; creative writing in fiction, poetry, screenwriting and creative nonfiction. The humanities thread runs through everything, culminating in a PechaKucha presentation each senior spring. Graduates leave with two diplomas - the state high school diploma and a Scholars Diploma in their arts discipline.
Drama 2002 produced Patina Miller. Drama 2003 produced Nicole Beharie. Drama 2007 produced Danielle Brooks. Drama 2005 produced Teyonah Parris, who landed Mad Men a few years out. Dance 2001 produced Joseph Phillips, who won the Junior Gold Medal at the 2002 USA International Ballet Competition before joining American Ballet Theatre's corps de ballet. Visual Arts 2004 produced Jacolby Satterwhite, featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. The school's ensembles have performed on NPR's From the Top and inside St. Peter's Basilica for the 500th anniversary of the Cappella Giulia in 2013. The first graduating class, in 2001, racked up more than $5.6 million in scholarship offers. The school takes its current name from Uldrick, who served as its first president from 1999 to 2003.
Located at 34.84 degrees N, 82.40 degrees W on a bluff above the Reedy River in downtown Greenville, immediately south of Falls Park. Best viewed at 3,000-5,000 feet AGL on approach to Greenville-Spartanburg International (KGSP, 15 nm northeast) or Greenville Downtown (KGMU, 5 nm northeast). The Tuscan-style arts complex with its north-facing courtyard sits adjacent to the Peace Center for the Performing Arts in the West End historic district.