Which Colleges Did Current Broadway Performers Attend?

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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<p>Interesting thread…</p>

<p>In the 80’s I was a self-taught musician/vocalist/song-writer who went to Nashville to work in all kinds of music, (particularly Pop Music…yes, there’s Pop Music in Nashville.) In the end, my lack of training held me back. I had a big voice but was a poor sight reader and I lacked composition and arrangement skills. I wrote a lot of songs, sang a lot of back-up and demos, played a lot of live gigs, built a small studio and eeked out a living for many years. My degree is in education and my thought was I would be bi-vocational until I could be music full-time, but that never happened. People told me I had the raw talent (especially my voice) but I never put myself in the position to have it developed, something I couldn’t do on my own.</p>

<p>Flash forward 18 years…my oldest son has an unbelievably great voice and has attracted attention from agents and labels in pop music. Being home-schooled has afforded him the opportunity to be in four major theater productions a year for the past four years. He has taken college-level voice lessons and is in a dance studio. He has been told by current Broadway talent that he is ready to audition now, but we are going the conservatory route. You can’t develop yourself…in anything. Everyone needs training, mentors, counsel, guidance, correction. My son knows he needs work in his dance and acting to be in a position to get top-level work, including Broadway. He picked his school based primarily on their track record for producing performers with Broadway and Broadway Tour credits. He is all-in for this profession. Just like a talented mathematician picks MIT for his training in Engineering he picked his school based on his ultimate goal.</p>

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<p>Well, sheesh, I’m dying here! What did he pick?</p>

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<p>^^^If you look at the Final Decisions thread, you will see that ManVan’s son is matriculating at CCM this fall. :slight_smile:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1112124-final-decisions-hs-class-2011-college-class-2015-a-3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1112124-final-decisions-hs-class-2011-college-class-2015-a-3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>You know what, ManVan? You are right - you can’t develop yourself. Or perhaps we should say there is a definite limit to how much you can develop yourself. I am not the expert in music and theater - I only know what I learned from my daughter’s experiences - but I <em>am</em> actually with expertise, experience, and education, in the visual arts, and while innate and inborn talent matters - it goes oh so much further when that talented person has been developed, educated, advised, critiqued, guided, corrected, etc, etc, by the right people.</p>

<p>I can look at a young person’s artwork and pretty much instantly tell if they’ve ever had studio life drawing lessons or not. I’m mystified as to how the voice people can listen to seven words and tell if someone can sing or not :smiley: ~ I certainly can’t ~ but I can do the same thing they do, but with visuals. </p>

<p>I think that artists just really cannot develop to their full potential in a vacuum.</p>

<p>~ I don’t think, and certainly don’t WANT to believe, that just because certain schools do open doors, that all other schools do NOT open doors - in our case the famous big eastern schools weren’t an option for several reasons. But we had carefully calculated and well thought out reasons for the decision we made. If they seek outside sources for knowledge and instruction and have a burning desire to be the best they can be, I think they will find it.</p>

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<p>The flip side is also true, without inate, God-given talent, no amount of training will be sufficient to put you in a place where you can work at a high-level, let alone a professional level.</p>

<p>My son has a friend who is an excellent singer and an amazing dancer. He has been in a studio for years and gets sporadic professional work, especially as a choreographer. He did multiple auditions for “Scottsboro Boys” and was in the final 2 for the “Swing” which ultimately went to someone else. He saw that he needed vocal and acting work and picked an inexpensive, but comprehensive Musical Theater program at a nearby state school that has a conservatory model. I’m confident that he’ll get the training he needs to tighten up his skills and I expect to see him work at a professional level.</p>

<p>An actor is a self-employed private contractor who “bids jobs.” Your skill and professionalism will dictate to what level and what type of work you get. Talent is the intangible. Training is the tangible.</p>

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<p>“Talent is the intangible. Training is the tangible.”</p>

<p>I really like that. Very true and succinct!</p>

<p>Being at the right place at the right time factors in too, but unless there’s a crystal ball I don’t know about, one can’t control for that part of it, other than to try to cover all their bases as well as they can.</p>

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<p>When we got the final list of acceptances, I ranked them according to price and then re-ranked them after subtracting scholarships. It sure scrambled the list, top to bottom! Scholarships varied from none at all to “token” to moderate to huge. There’s no way we could have predicted that outcome back in September.</p>

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<p>I crunched a lot of numbers for the schools my son picked to pursue. I tried to look at all the financial factors in completing a BFA and compared them. I looked at: tuition, room/board, listed static university costs (as listed by the university), estimated unknown costs, length of program (we looked at one international school that was a three-year BFA), length of mandatory dorm residence (some are 1 year, some are 2 years), scholarships, grants, work-study, transfer credits (some schools are more accepting of academic/gen-ed transfer credits than others.) I tried to calculate a high-end estimate cost for each school’s BFA. The costs of the 8 schools we targeted ranged from over $100.000.00 to under $50,000.00. The costs included all the up-front offered scholarships from each program. Some programs had more scholarships for returning students. I didn’t factor those into our calculations. We had about a 3-week window from the time all the offers and grants were on the table and the deadlines for the decisions were due. We also didn’t want to wait until the last minute because we knew there would be other students on waiting lists of the schools our son didn’t choose that were quite anxious, (some of whom we knew personally.) In the end, the financial considerations did not exclude our son from his top choice. We were thankful for that.</p>

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<p>I’m in no way affiliated with CMU, just as an FYI (but don’t we all wish?) and this was on the front page of the University website.</p>

<p>[Tony</a> Award Nominees - Carnegie Mellon University](<a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/creativity/2011/spring/tony-awards.shtml]Tony”>Tony Award Nominees - Carnegie Mellon University | CMU)</p>

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<p>I’ve always thought CCM seemed a really well-priced school for the quality of the training. And it sure seems there are almost always CCM grads in my Playbills!</p>

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<p>The above got me curious about my own daughter’s alma mater (NYU/Tisch) with regard to these year’s Tonys (though I noticed some on my own during the telecast). I found it listed on Tisch’s site but it included BFA, MFA, and faculty (I realize that is not equivalent to simply a BFA list of alum). </p>

<p>This year’s Tony nominees affiliated with or alum of Tisch:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[2011</a> Tony Nominees : Tisch School of the Arts at NYU](<a href=“http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/object/2011_tony_nominations.html]2011”>http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/object/2011_tony_nominations.html)</p>

<p>This year’s Tony winners affiliated with Tisch:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[Tisch</a> Triumphant at Tonys: Tisch School of the Arts at NYU](<a href=“http://alumni.tisch.nyu.edu/object/2011_tony_winners.html]Tisch”>http://alumni.tisch.nyu.edu/object/2011_tony_winners.html)</p>

<p>Watching last night’s telecast (which I thought was really great this year, btw), I realized my D performed with Nikki James at my D’s Tisch graduation at Madison Square Garden, and she worked this year each week for a semester on staff with Sutton Foster in MT classes, getting to sing with her for the students on the final day. So, yay for Nikki and Sutton and all the rest.</p>

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<p>The Tonys were awesome!! Neil Patrick Harris should host every awards show – Emmys, Oscars, Tonys and whatever else there is!! Such funny and clever stuff they did.</p>

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<p>It was a fun show and I agree that Neil did a great job. I truly enjoyed the closing number which, in case there may be some here who didn’t know, was penned by Tommy Kail and Lin-Manuel Miranda.</p>

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<p>Thanks alwaysamom - we were wondering who wrote that since it had to be written towards the end of the show once all the awards were given out. </p>

<p>Just saw “How To Succeed in Business…” and it was wonderful, a lot of fun. I didn’t look too hard but the only school listed that I saw was CCM, I’ll look more thoroughly tomorrow. Daniel Radcliffe held his own, probably wouldn’t have gotten the role if he wasn’t who he is, but did a better than fine job. John Laroquette was so much enjoyable and threw in some ad libs which I always enjoy.</p>

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<p>At the Tonys, I was also impressed with how much better these theater actors appeared on stage than their counterparts at the other awards shows. Everything, from the production numbers, to the introductions, and the acceptance speeches were better than the Oscars. Hooray for live actors!! </p>

<p>I was also bowled over by that closing number. The writing and the delivery by my new love, NPH!! I just hope my DVR caught that, because I think it might have run past 11:00…</p>

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<p>I saw “War Horse” recently. Most of the actors listed their education, which must mean it’s quite a young cast! It was a pretty diverse range, with the “usual suspects” listed (top theater schools), but also a couple of top BA schools (I recall Harvard and Vassar, but if not those schools specifically, then similar).</p>

<p>It was phenomenal, btw!! I almost posted a thread on this forum just about the show. From the point of view of the script, it didn’t really rate Best Play, but in terms of the production, I would agree with the prize. </p>

<p>At first, I was feeling sorry for these kids (and their parents) going through these expensive colleges and ending up inside a puppet… but as it went on, I realized that these performers were acting: they were living, breathing and thinking as a horse. It really was a triumph of physical acting.</p>

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<p>if your DVR didn’t catch it, it’s all on Youtube and worth watching again and again</p>

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<p>Casey Erin Clark, BFA MT '04 current National Tour of Les Miz (Fantine u/s)
Lisa Karlin, BFA MT '05 Addams Family Broadway (Ancestor, Wednesday u/s)
Bry Parham, BFA MT '07 Porgy and Bess ART/Broadway (Serena)</p>

<p>…just to name three recent success stories…but every school can boast of Broadway/National Tour grads as well as TV and Film. Regardless of where you go it is still incumbent upon the young performer to temper their given talent with a heavy dose of technique and a wheelbarrow full of tenacity of purpose.</p>

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<p>SDonCC - Seeing War Horse in a couple weeks when I come into town to move my kid back to NYU. So excited that it got extended! Other shows this summer we very much enjoyed and can recommend–Book of Mormon (so laugh-out-loud funny but at heart a sweet story despite a few cringe-inducing moments), Anything Goes (Sutton is pretty much the Queen of Broadway) and Master Class (Tyne Daly was wonderful). Also Follies in DC with Bernadette–if CC readers can make the limited Broadway run, I highly recommend it–she will have you in tears. PS - As long as we are mentioning Broadway successes in this thread, keep an eye on up and coming Chicago actress, Jessie Mueller, who just got cast opposite Harry Connick in the re-do of On a Clear Day. Have seen her in several Chicago productions (including a boffo Merrily We Roll Along and She Loves Me). Can’t wait!!</p>

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<p>The Coastal Carolina University theatre group on facebook just updated for me with a post from an alumni who announced they will be making their Broadway debut in “Spiderman: Turn off the Dark” very soon! It’s great casting news and exciting to hear. We already have many extremely successful alumni at regional theatres all over the country and on tours, but that break into Broadway is now slowly happening!</p>