{"id":38412,"date":"2025-09-30T08:10:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/?page_id=38412"},"modified":"2025-10-03T14:15:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:15:41","slug":"quincy-isaiah-young-alumni-award","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/awards-nominations\/alumni-awards-and-athletic-hall-of-fame-program\/quincy-isaiah-young-alumni-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Quincy Isaiah \u201917, Young Alumni Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Quincy Isaiah \u201917, Young Alumni Award<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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\"Quincy<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Born and raised in Muskegon (Mich.), Quincy also, in a way, grew up in \u201cWhitman\u201d\u2014as in Walt Whitman\u2014in the sense that he, Quincy, like Whitman, \u201ccontains multitudes.\u201d Already he has played some of them, including Magic Johnson (in HBO\u2019s \u201cWinning Time\u201d), Walter Lee Younger, and Benny (in the College\u2019s Festival Playhouse productions of \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d and \u201cIn the Heights,\u201d respectively).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019ll more to come as the acclaimed young actor (he won a Rising Star Award for his work in \u201cWinning Time\u201d) considers new roles and explores \u201cmultitudes\u201d of new verbs, like producing, writing, and directing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quincy came to K to pursue a business degree and play football. He played three seasons of the latter, but two junior-year experiences led him to change his major from business to theatre arts: a part in \u201cSketch-a-etch\u201d (a fellow student\u2019s Second City-style comedy revue) and study abroad in Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latter he considers \u201camong the top three best things I\u2019ve done in my life!\u201d Why? \u201cYou see that the world is so much bigger than imagined,\u201d and you learn that making money\u2014call it \u201cjob\u201d\u2014is a very small part of \u201ccareer,\u201d which is the way work and passion cohere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThat was very empowering to me,\u201d he says. \u201cThat helped me later to say \u2018Oh, OK, I don\u2019t have to be an accountant because it\u2019s a \u2018secure job.\u2019 Something is secure because of how you perceive it, but nothing is 100 percent secure. That was my biggest fear of becoming an actor\u2014the perception that, well, if you\u2019re going to be an actor, you\u2019re probably not going to get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He fully invested his senior year at K into all aspects of theatre arts, both on- and behind-stage. He then applied and was accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. That turned out to be a very expensive option, so Quincy decided to move to that city and hone his craft through ad hoc acting classes while he looked for bit roles and background work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWinning Time\u201d was as much an opportunity to learn\u2014a \u201cmaster class\u201d says Quincy\u2014as it was a big break. He\u2019s since acted in and produced the independent film, \u201cGrassland,\u201d considered various other scripts, and started writing one of his own for a short film he plans to direct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so much more out there for me to do. Figuring out what that looks like, then building it out\u2026that\u2019s excitement!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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<\/span> Back to Program<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":260,"featured_media":0,"parent":38293,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/page_fullwidth.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38412","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"guten_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"ab-block-post-grid-landscape":false,"ab-block-post-grid-square":false,"guten_post_layout_landscape_large":false,"guten_post_layout_portrait_large":false,"guten_post_layout_square_large":false,"guten_post_layout_landscape":false,"guten_post_layout_portrait":false,"guten_post_layout_square":false,"campus-posts-thumbnail":false,"gform-image-choice-sm":false,"gform-image-choice-md":false,"gform-image-choice-lg":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38412"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38632,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38412\/revisions\/38632"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}