<p>Alice Ripley is a great example of an actor first MT performer and she got no attention at all until the right part came along when she was in her 40’s. I’ve never seen her dance. My point is not that it’s impossible. Just that in many musical theater programs singing trumps acting by a mile and I’m not at all surprised to hear actors balk at MT’s. I hear it a lot. Sigh…</p>
<p>Voice and dance are definitely first in many many many many, maybe most musical theater programs. What are the chances all of these kids also happen to be great actors? Some undoubtedly are, but common sense would say that most is unlikely. From what we have seen thus far the actor training in “triple-threat” programs is often inadequate. There are only so many hours in a day and a chorus kid does not need to be much of an actor.</p>
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<p>Flossy, I find your use of the word “frequently” makes that just too general a statement. There certainly are MT programs which emphasize acting as job one and provide excellent acting training. Are they all like that? I suspect not, but absolutely some are so we should avoid buying into a stereotype that suggests MTs are not trained to be actors and certainly not imply that MT’s can’t act. Some MTs can’t. But then again, some actors can’t act either.</p>
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<p>Actingmt, seriously. This post is insulting. Your kid isn’t even in her program yet. Wait a year before you make that kind of a generalization.</p>
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<p>I don’t disagree with any of this. I’d only add that it is way more satisfying to sit through a musical when the performer can act and some of them really can. In fact, I’d much rather watch a so-so bordering on bad singer who could act the part beautifully than a great singer who cannot act. I’ve seen way too much of the latter and it kills the show for me. I should also add that I’ve seen bad acting in straight plays too though. But they “sure were purty”.</p>
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<p>Isn’t this the crux of the issue more than it being one about the MT vs. the straight actor? If you don’t have the talent for acting in the first place, it doesn’t really matter what the training looks like.</p>
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<h2>I’ve seen way too much of the latter and it kills the show for me. </h2>
<p>Me too, and that is exactly my point. I certainly wasn’t intending to insult anyone with my earlier chorus comment. It’s just a different skill set and acting is not a big part of that particular type of professional work. Most actors probably won’t be getting jobs dancing on Broadway.</p>
<p>Tracie Thoms, Kristin Chenoweth, Chad Kimball, Norm Lewis, Alfie bo, Karen Olivo, Audra McDonald…All amazing actors that can sing. Except for Audra I have seen all of them perform live…So I don’t understand this dig on MT actors…</p>
<p>None of them dance. It’s the triple-threat question again. Leads vs. chorus. This came up over on the MT threads as well and it’s interesting to me since my non-dancer kid is considering taking hours and hours of dance in college and I expect after 4 years she will still be an actress/singer. Maybe, a stronger acting program makes more sense.</p>
<p>Karen Olivo not a triple threat? She won the Tony for West Side Story…Norm Lewis, not a dancer? hmmm</p>
<p>Well it really wasn’t your point actingmt or it’s at least not what you wrote. While I’m at it, “most” MTs won’t be getting jobs dancing on Broadway either. In fact, “many” MTs will not be getting jobs dancing in a chorus anywhere because they don’t dance well enough for that. The dancers who can sing have a better shot at those jobs. So an MT better darn well care about their acting if they can’t rely on that. You need to realize we are not talking about “leapin lizards and jazz hands” here. The training they receive is real and acting is the emphasis at many programs and most definitely at Tisch. BTW the degree you receive from Tisch is a BFA in Drama no matter what studio you attend. Tisch has only one studio dedicated to MT. You seriously think there isn’t much acting taught there?</p>
<p>The acting majors at my son’s school still take several dance classes, just not as many as the MTs. It’s great for physical fitness no matter what!</p>
<p>Don’t singers who dance regularly land in MT programs? All I am saying is the “MT Acting” stereotype is not without some truth. Which schools? I have no idea and suspect it’s ultimately more about the student than the school, anyway. As for stars, you can find one to prove or disprove anything.</p>
<p>I think that when actors learn to dance, it must help them broaden their physical vocabulary, even if they never get cast in a Broadway chorus (or want to be). It’s the same with singing lessons. They give you more control and variety in your voice, even if you’re not primarily a singer.</p>
<p>Of course there are many singers who dance that land in MT programs. But there are also actors who sing or actors who dance, or actors who sing and dance in MT programs too. Straight acting programs don’t have a lock on all of the good actors. And frankly there are some amazing singers (and I suspect dancers) in straight acting programs as well.</p>
<p>One last thing I’d like to add with respect to the tangent this thread went on (my fault I guess but I felt the need to speak up). When it comes to evaluating how much acting is emphasized with a program including MT programs, it’s not just about looking at how many acting classes are offered vs. dance, voice etc. You really have to know what skills are emphasized within the context of those various classes. For example, if you’re in a singing class, is it only about hitting the right note or do they also demand that you act the song well and if push comes to shove, which is deemed more important? Do you need to “dance it well” or does your dancing also have to advance the story line from an acting perspective? And so on.</p>
<p>There are some wonderful acting programs that have tons of class time dedicated to acting. I have no doubt that a strong actor will get more acting specific training there than they would in schools that offer less training in those subjects. But there are also “acting BFAs” that have less class time in acting classes than some of the MT programs that I know. (I’ve seen actual schedules. I’m not making this up.) So you can’t just measure class for class and you can’t just make a blanket statement that because it is BFA in Acting (vs. BFA in Drama in the case of Tisch) it means more acting training. You need to understand what is really going on on the ground.</p>
<p>OK sorry for the tangent. </p>
<p>Mason Gross Rutgers or NYU. Prestige? Who cares? Both are wonderful schools. Pick the one that you feel will offer you the kind of training you want and then… try to get in. That’s a whole other ball of wax.</p>
<p>That’s the rub…actually getting into one of these two prestigious programs…</p>
<p>Alice Ripley’s voice was shot by Next To Normal. She didn’t dance either. It did not stop her from putting on one of the most amazing performances I’d ever seen on an MT stage. My daughter and I saw her the last week of her run on the show. Talked to her at the Stage Door. What a great person in addition to being a talented actress. She must have stayed and talked for an hour. I loved her description of what it took to play the part. She said everyone knew not to talk with her during intermissions. And after the show was over, she said she needed 10-15 minutes in her room every night to remind herself that she was not her character. Really a great education about what it takes to be in theater and put on a show like that night after night.</p>
<p>I have to disagree…her voice is not shot…she did the tour after she left NYC. I saw her 3 times in N2N in LA and she sounded wonderful. But more than that her ability to play that role night after night was incredible. She is currently doing Cabarets around NYC and is in Seattle doing Carrie. She is one of the most accomplished actors I have ever seen on stage. She went to Kent State and Depauw, not sure what she majored in. If it was acting I think I would tell my D to run and apply if their training produced such an amazing actress.</p>
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Another thing you have to consider is how the skills learned are actually being used in practical application. What is mainly going to be taught acting-wise in most collegiate programs whether they be Acting or MT will involve some take on Stanislavski’s psychological realism. How-everrrrrr, what are they doing with it? Is the lion’s share of their scene work in MT styles or are they delving into the complexities of scenes by playwrights like Williams, Odets, O’Neill and Miller? Classic theatre by the likes of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov? The Greeks? Other modern styles and genres? If so, how much time are they spending on it? Digging deep or just touching on it before moving back into MT? Are they doing any of those full-length plays in live performance or is it all MT? And if it’s a straight acting program, do they do ANY MT?</p>
<p>That’s where the main difference lies and there will be different outcomes in practical skillsets even between two equally gifted students who’ve been taught the same acting technique depending on how that flows. You’ve gotta DO this stuff and it can be difficult to settle into a complex straight scene and not push things if you’re used to playing big styles in which the arch inevitably leads to bursting into song and dance. Not that that can’t be an amazing thing and isn’t part of what is at its best a wonderful art form, but it’s a different animal. </p>
<p>Oh, and ironically, there’s a Backstage column that just came out yesterday entitled [“5</a> Ways for a Musical Theater Performer to be Taken More Seriously as an Actor.”](<a href=“http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/backstage-experts/5-ways-musical-theater-performer-be-taken-more-seriously-actor/]"5”>http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/backstage-experts/5-ways-musical-theater-performer-be-taken-more-seriously-actor/) It just goes to show that the perception is there whether you feel it to be justified or not.</p>
<p>Let’s see … Got a little more time …</p>
<p>While I don’t have Making It On Broadway on my Kindle, I do have William Esper’s The Actor’s Art and Craft. That kind of brings us back around to relevance since Esper set up and used to chair the Rutgers program and the acting faculty at both Rutgers and in the Meisner Extension at Tisch are his former students plus still another one of his studio teachers also teaches in the Tisch Experimental Theatre Wing. In it, there is a student named Kenny who was having all kinds of problems and eventually got himself cut. Here’s an excerpt with Esper speaking with his assistant, Damon D’Marco, about him in his office …<br>
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<p>The students in the class in that book weren’t kids straight out of high school, either. Most were mid-20s to early-30s with a good bit of professional experience. And “Mimi” was a former child sitcom star. They tend to suffer a lot of the same maladies as MTers when they try to transition into dramatic adult roles.</p>
<p>This concerns me a lot. My son had a choice of Acting or MT at his school, and chose MT because he wanted the additional music training; what he really wanted was a double major in Acting and Vocal Performance, and was told, that’s what our MT program is, plus the equivalent of a minor in Dance.</p>
<p>Since he’s there now and I am not, I presume he will become aware of any differences in training emphasis. All his acting classes are with the Acting majors and will be for at least two years. This will be an interesting topic of conversation at Thanksgiving!</p>
<p>My D is in an Acting BFA with “no” MT - however, she has done lots of theatrical dance in her Movement classes (perhaps, it seems, more dance than other movement techniques), and she’s had singing-for-actors classes as well. She is at LAMDA this semester - not an obvious training ground for MT, and I think 2 of the 12 classes she is taking are specifically dance and singing - but again, very Acting focused. Many, if not most, of the students she studies with at home have a strong interest in MT - however defined.</p>
<p>The point I wanted to make is that these days there is so much music integrated into “straight” theatre that it’s almost impossible to find the line. My D has been in 2 plays already in college that included music; one of them, a Brecht piece, could even be called a “musical,” except that it’s a wholly different animal from what many people call musicals. There were many songs (Brecht tends to give the lyrics in his scripts, leaving the music up to whoever is putting on the show), but I’d hardly say anyone “broke out” into them. My D was in a musical where she played an instrument as part of her character - instead of a singing solo, at one point she played the song instead. We’re seeing a lot of this in plays, perhaps more than before. Or perhaps we’re just noticing it more.</p>
<p>Just as there are fun plays solely for entertainment, there are serious musicals where the songs evolve from character just as profoundly as a monologue or a physical expression of emotion. I think we’re seeing once again that 4 years is a very short time to expect that students will gain every skill, get every experience, and understand everything. What we can hope for is that in their program they will learn a foundation, that they will understand that they have a lot to learn, and they will know how to keep learning throughout their lives.</p>