<p>If anyone is interested - Brent Wagner (U of Michigan head of MT) is holding a 3-day workshop in Torrance, CA, for high school students on song performance. My D (sr this year) has taken it before and found it extremely valuable, both for becoming a better MT performer and getting ready for college auditions.</p>
<p>It is held the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, for a total of 20 very intensive hours.</p>
<p>They only take 18 students, and it fills up pretty quickly. Auditions are on Saturday, Feb. 23, but you can also submit by DVD or videotape. It happens at Professional School of the Arts, their website has more information - Professional</a> School for the Arts - Torrance, California</p>
<p>I hope this doesn't sound like an ad - but I just thought there might be other kids out there looking for this kind of workshop.</p>
<p>My D is a junior in high school. She will be going through the college audition process all too soon. The workshop looks like a wonderful opportunity to help her prepare for next years audition process. The University of Michigan is one of her top choices so to be able to work this closely with Brent Wagner the chairman of the Musical Theatre department is fantastic. The web site Professional</a> School for the Arts - Torrance, California had all the information and audition process.</p>
<p>I looked on the website and it said that a $125 holding deposit is due at the time of audition. Does this get refunded if you are not accepted?
thanks!</p>
<p>Dear Momster, I wanted to thank you for posting the information about this workshop. My daughter, who is a Junior in High School, auditioned for the program and today got an acceptance call for the workshop! I'm so grateful for you and others who have been so generous with valuable information. Being accepted was such a nice boost for her self-esteem. Thanks again.</p>
<p>I am so happy to hear this good news! My daughter is going to the workshop again, too. She is a senior and is still waiting to hear from Michigan. If she doesn't get accepted there, she will probably end up at NYU, but the workshop will still be great training for her.</p>
<p>It is a great workout, she will have homework to prepare for it, and it will help her to get some information in place that she will be able to use for her college apps.</p>
<p>My D, also a junior will be attending the workshop for the first time. She is thrilled, but now overwhelmed by that homework assignment! We are currently in New York working through a college search road trip and won't be home for another week. Somehow that Decade Chart has to get done during her tech week for her high school musical. For those of you who have done this already, did you get the musical Thesaurus recommended or just use the internet?</p>
<p>It was a lot of work - but it was very handy once she had to start compiling a lot of this info for her college apps!</p>
<p>We started with a list of parts she played, and the songs she wanted to include, then went to some of the good MT websites, like nodanw and ibdb, and just started looking up each show, one by one, and taking down the info. Once we had it all, we organized it into the correct decade.</p>
<p>My D was in final weeks of rehearsal for a show when hers was due, so I have to admit that I did some of the leg work for her, and I did do the formatting of the final chart. But it is a good learning experience for them, to see common composers and authors, etc.</p>
<p>Momster, since you are a veteran of this workshop I have a question for you. I noticed on the acceptance email that only 2 guests are allowed to watch the closing performance. Do they adhere to that rule? I was hoping to include my mom in the audience along with my husband & myself. Also, I was hoping to find out you & your daughter's name so we can meet face to face. It sounds like all of us have daughters whose name begin with the letter "M"!! Melsmom, my daughter completed the decade assignment, it wasn't too hard. She found the publishing years on the sheet music itself. By the way, what cities do each of you live in? We live in San Clemente.</p>
<p>The guest rule is there because it's a pretty small room. I'm sure Lisa will be as accomodating as she can, probably best to ask her as soon as you can.</p>
<p>My daughter's name actually is Emily, we just call her M, so that's where "my name" came from. We are in Redondo Beach.</p>
<p>What exactly was the "homework assignment" for this workshop? It sounds like it is a way to analyze/organize one's repertoire and would be helpful to any musical theater student.</p>
<p>It's probably the same thing UM MT students do throughout their years in the program, starting with freshman year - they catalog all of the songs in their repertoire by decade of composition - so they have a table for the years 1900-1909, listing any song written then, composer/lyricist, and show for which it was written (if that applies); this is then repeated for the years 1910-1919, 1920-29, 1930-39, etc. This is a great way to keep track of the many styles and genres of music a student has available, and also to point out gaps in their repertoire base.</p>
<p>CoachC is exactly right - in addition to the songs in their repertoire listed by decade, they also wanted a list of the roles played, name of show, composer/lyricist, and songs sung; if ensemble part, main songs sung. Apparently, Mr Wagner is using the list to choose a song for each student to learn for the workshop. It will be interesting to see if he chooses one from a decade that is not well represented in the repertoire, or if he is looking for a specific song that suits her voice/style?</p>
<p>Thanks to CoachC and Melsmom. A quick preliminary chart really does illustrate gaps in repertoire. Please let us know how Mr. Wagner seems to choose repertoire, melsmom. That would be interesting to know.</p>
<p>I understand he tries hard to pick songs that the student has never worked on, and that most of the class won't know, either.
They are always good songs to act out, and ones that demonstrate various kinds of song structure. Mostly they are musical theater songs, but sometimes he throws a pop song in, too. My D had a song from a film.
He may choose comedy or dramatic songs for someone based on their chart.</p>
<p>MomsterofM, do you know when he is going to send the kids their songs? Are they expected to learn it well on their own and then work on the presentation, or just be familiar with it and learn it at the workshop?</p>
<p>My D got hers today. They are expected to know it and be able to sing it (not necessarily WELL), they will work on the performance of it in the workshop. But they should definitely know the words and the notes.</p>