The past few weeks, I’ve been working as music director for a production that features songs with music by Richard Rodgers, many of them quite familiar: My Funny Valentine and The Sound of Music are just a few of the most well-known. The singers are thrilled to have the opportunity to sing such iconic material. …
Continue reading “Ghosts In The Room: The challenges of singing familiar songs”
A friend who runs a musical theater program at an arts-centric high school wrote to inquire what skills a student graduating from her school’s program ought to be expected to possess. Her question got me thinking: what are the most important learning outcomes to be pursued in a high school musical theater program? Personally, I …
Continue reading “Learning outcomes at the high school level?”
This is the first in a series of posts inspired by this year’s Musical Theater Educators Alliance conference. Every year for the past sixteen years, leading pedagogues from musical theater training programs around the world have gathered to share presentations on their most effective methods. This year, our meeting was hosted by New York University’s …
Stew, who co-created the musical Passing Strange with Heidi Rodewald, and whose new musical Family Album opens tomorrow at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, said, “We don’t like musical theater actors so much.” Did that make you flinch? I did when I read it. Contemporary theater artists like Stew, inspired by the vivid immediacy of rock, …
Continue reading “Rockin’ out in musicals – six keys to success!”
“There are two aspects to the technique of the [Stanislavski] ‘system’; one inner, where the mind and imagination create the thoughts and feelings of the character; the other outer, where the body expresses and communicates what is going on inside. It is no good my carrying imaginative and subtle thoughts and feelings inside me if …
