<p>oregon mt mom has provided great information and I will try to augment her post with some additional comments. UArts’ “campus” consists of a number of buildings along a 5 block stretch of Broad St (Avenue of the Arts) between Walnut St and South St. The school’s buildings are interspersed with major professional performing arts venues, office buildings and retail stores and restaurants. UArts also has 4 dorm buildings located a block or so east and west of Broad St at various points along the north-south corridor that comprises Avenue of the Arts.</p>
<p>The area in which the school is located is a very vibrant and safe area. During weekdays, the streets are filled with business and working people, professionals young and old, students and visitors to the city. At night, there is an abundance of social and cultural activities ranging from partaking of the arts to casual and more up scale dining. This area of the city is also filled with retail shopping of every conceivable type.</p>
<p>Along Avenue of the Arts, there are: The Prince Music Theater (a half a block west of Broad St), the Academy of Music, The Wilma Theatre, the Merriam Theatre (an 1800 seat proscenium theatre owned by UArts as mentioned by oregon mt mom), the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. These venues are homes to touring Broadway shows, local professional productions of musicals and dramas, productions of original works, the Pennsylvania Ballet, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Philly Pops with Peter Nero, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A few blocks east of Broad St on Walnut is the Walnut St Theatre which does its own productions of dramas, comedies and musicals on it main stage and smaller productions in its 3rd floor black box. On the 5th floor is another black box used by a broad variety of small theatre companies. A few blocks further east and north is the Arden Theatre which also mounts its own productions of broad variety of musicals and dramas. All of these venues have their own websites so you can pretty readily get a full picture of the productions they do. In addition, there are at least a dozen or more smaller theatres spread throughout the center city area, each providing space for resident companies or for use by others. Take a look at the web site for the Theatre Alliance of Philadelphia to get a handle on the array of theatre companies that populate the area. All of this is within 5-20 minutes walking distance from all of the UArts dorms.</p>
<p>UArts adds its own performance spaces to the list. In the Terra Building (where MT freshman spend most of their time) there is a state of the art black box studio theatre that’s just a few years old as well as a concert hall built at the same time. heading south, there is the above mentioned Merriam which is used for some of the schools mainstage productions. There is a performance auditorium and black box at the Gershman Y and a main stage and recently refurbished cabaret theatre at the Arts Bank located at the southern end of the “campus” at South St.</p>
<p>Typically, UArts puts on about 8 productions per semester as part of its season. There are also student productions and often outside productions directed or written by faculty utilizing UArts’ spaces. Both acting and MT students audition for all of the departmental productions which are directed by faculty and from time to time outside professionals. Students who are not cast in departmental shows must audition for student productions. Students are also frequently used in faculty productions and get to work with outside actors. Auditions occur at the end of each semester for the following semester. Freshmen must start auditioning for the spring shows and have the option to participate in fill in auditions in the fall when spots open up in fall shows for various reasons.</p>
<p>The MT curriculum at UArts puts a heavy emphasis on acting, both straight acting and acting the song. Acting and MT majors take the same core acting studios together for 7 semesters. Acting majors take other specialty classes while MT majors take MT voice, repertory and performance classes which include acting the song. Dance is allocated less time in the mandated curriculum than acting and voice/MT and you could characterize the curriculum as a double major in acting and MT voice/performance with a minor in dance. However, MT students must take specified dance classes 6 semesters and include a movement elective each semester of the senior year. The dance component is focused on ballet and jazz with tap and partnering also required in some semesters. depending on the year, students must take 3-4.5 hours of dance per week but students can drop in on additional MT dance classes at will and can take more advanced dance classes through the school of dance with instructor permission. My daughter did that with a couple of classes and we know MT students who took multiple dance classes through the school of dance.</p>
<p>The overiding atmosphere and culture of the department is very supportive among and between students and faculty. Students attend each others’ shows and very vocally support those in the cast. While students compete with each other for casting, more than once my daughter and her close friends worked with each other preparing for call backs they had in common. Many of the faculty go above and beyond class room support for students, providing them with opportunities outside of depaertment endeavors and providing guidance regarding outside opportunities and related preparation. My daughter spent a lot of time in the pit at professional productions where UArts faculty were the Music Directors. As a freshman, she was invited to be part of an ensemble singing with the leads of an Equity production of Les Mis at a fund raiser for the theatre staging the show. She was invited to be the principal female opposite a UArts’ acting professor in a staged reading of an original play written by another UArts professor with more than 125 published plays to his credits and in which she worked side by side with outside professional actors playing other roles. During her last semester, one of her instructors, a very prolific working actor in musicals, and his wife, a well known local director, offered to review my daughter’s book and help her restructure it for post graduate auditions.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, almost a year after graduating, my daughter is very pleases with the experience she had at UArts and life as a student in Philadelphia.</p>