<p>On a plane home from NYC as we speak after seeing 4 shows in 3 days…whew!!! 2 University of Michigan alumni in “Anything Goes”, 1 in “Memphis”, and 1 getting ready to go on national tour for “Memphis”. Not sure of the others, but I am sure they are out there :)</p>
<p>I saw Follies this week! Fabulous fabulous cast! The
younger ones in the cast who listed their schools: BFA Tisch, UMich, Juilliard, FSU, UNCSA, UC Irvine …</p>
<p>Follies in NY - there was a Belmont MT grad in the cast, too! Saw this again a couple days ago and can say the main difference between NY and DC was that the NY audience was wildly enthusiastic and gave long, cheering applause after many of the numbers. See this one if you can–the music is awesome and performed beautifully.</p>
<p>Ball State</p>
<p>Emily Behny ('10) is currently Belle on the national tour of Beauty and the Beast.</p>
<p>Megan Osterhaus (Mary Poppins Orignal Cast, Current Mrs. Banks) University of Central Oklahoma</p>
<p>The University of Central Oklahoma has graduates performing internationally (Broadway, Off-Broadway, Regionally, Cruise Ships, Disney). It’s a GREAT program!</p>
<p>Just for fun I went through 1,216 online bios for current adult actors cast in 48 Broadway, Off-Broadway and National Tour musicals and tabulated what schools they attended (this is a large majority of the musicals and tours listed on Broadway.com that are currently running and the shows are listed at the bottom of this post). A total of 466 actors listed their schools. The list is shown below, after a bunch of caveats.</p>
<p>Some up-front caveats:</p>
<p>(1) These sorts of lists are by nature very temporal - roles come and go, actors rotate in and out of productions, and with such small numbers (5 or less for most schools) position in the list (beyond the top 10 or so) could change radically with only small changes in employment.</p>
<p>(2) The list is clearly biased in that it consists of only those actors who list their school in their online bio. Hence, some schools may just be better at getting their grads to list their alma mater. </p>
<p>(3) Obviously, schools with large class sizes would potentially have an advantage over schools with much smaller class sizes in accumulating large counts of working actors. </p>
<p>(4) Not all graduates of the various schools majored in musical theatre or theatre - some majored in dance, vocal music, non-fine arts, etc.</p>
<p>(5) There are many specialized, non-traditional types of roles in musicals (ballet dancers, opera singers, acrobats, etc.) that could potentially skew the data and this quick-and-dirty survey did not account for any of that differentiation.</p>
<p>(6) Of course, EVERY school has more working graduates than the numbers on the list – the survey ONLY COVERS CURRENT, ONLINE BIOS. Some actors who are in rehearsals for new shows are currently “offline” and not included in the survey (see caveats 1 and 2).</p>
<p>(7) I may have made some errors; you tend to get cross-eyed looking at 1,216 bios.</p>
<p>There are, of course, many other potential points of contention with regard to this data. On the other hand, the data does include a pretty significant number of actors (466) in terms of Broadway employment (it is a really small industry). </p>
<p>Personally, I would not put a whole lot of stock in evaluating schools according to the data in this list. However, many schools make mention of Broadway actors on their web pages, hence, grads with Broadway employment must have some significance. Looking at the data, it does seem pretty obvious to me that some schools are clearly at the top in terms of producing Broadway and National Tour actors, and the schools at the very top are the “usual suspects” in terms of reputation. This, of course, begs the chicken-and-egg question, “how much credit can be attributed to training at top schools since they get their pick of the most talented kids to begin with?”</p>
<p>All-in-all, it is kind of fun to look at. I was surprised by some of the results:</p>
<p>NYU 40
Michigan 25
Boco 23
CCM 19
CMU 18
Florida State 16
AMDA 13
Northwestern 13
OCU 13
Julliard 11
Penn State 10
Syracuse 10
U Arts 9
Ailey (see note 1) 8
Elon 8
UC Irvine 8
Yale 8
Point Park 7
Hartt 6
Northern Colorado (see note 2) 6
Oklahoma 6
USC 6
Catholic University 5
Fordham (see note 1) 5
Shenandoah 5
SUNY Buffalo 5
SUNY Purchase 5
UNCSA 5
Baldwin-Wallace 4
CSU Fullerton 4
Emerson 4
Marymount Manhattan 4
New School 4
Wagner 4
BYU 3
Harvard 3
Ithaca 3
James Madison 3
New World School of the Arts 3
Northern Kentucky 3
NYU Steinhardt 3
Otterbein 3
Webster 3
Wright State 3
Abilene Christian 2
Ball State 2
Boston U 2
Brandeis 2
Chapman 2
Clark Atlanta 2
Hofstra 2
Illinois Wesleyan 2
LSU 2
Michigan State 2
Muhlenburg 2
Oberlin 2
Pace 2
Roosevelt 2
Rutgers 2
Sheridan (CA) 2
SUNY Fredonia 2
Temple 2
Texas State 2
Wichita State 2
Arizona 1
Austin College 1
Belmont 1
Bird 1
Brooklyn College 1
Cal Arts 1
CAP 21 1
Catawba 1
Central Michigan 1
Circle in the Square 1
Columbia College 1
CSU ? 1
CSU Long Beach 1
Duke 1
East Carolina 1
Evansville 1
Five Towns 1
Hampton 1
Illinois 1
Indiana 1
Kent State 1
Lawrence 1
Long Island University 1
Los Angeles Theatre Academy 1
Miami 1
Miami Ohio 1
Mississippi 1
Morehouse 1
Mount Holyoke 1
MSU 1
Northern Illinois 1
Notre Dame de Namur 1
Ohio State 1
Princeton 1
Rice 1
Rider 1
Rollins 1
Sam Houston 1
San Jose State 1
Seattle Pacific 1
Smith 1
Spellman 1
Stanford 1
Stephens 1
SUNY Courtland 1
U Denver 1
U Houston 1
U Maine 1
U Maryland 1
U Wisconsin Eau-Claire 1
UCF 1
UCLA 1
UNC Chapel Hill 1
University of New Orleans 1
USF 1
Vanderbilt 1
Western Kentucky 1
Western Michigan 1
Wilberforce 1</p>
<p>Note 1: Ailey/Fordham grads are counted as “Ailey”</p>
<p>Note 2: The two actors who listed “UNC” as their school were counted as Northern Colorado, but they could have meant other schools (U of North Carolina, etc.).</p>
<p>Note 3: Child actors were excluded from the overall count</p>
<p>Note 4: European schools were excluded from the list (there was only a handful listed in the bios).</p>
<p>Note 5: If an actor listed more than one school, all schools were counted in the list</p>
<p>Broadway and Off-Broadway Shows reviewed: Anything Goes, Jersey Boys, Book of Mormon, Memphis, Wicked, Chicago, Lion King, Sister Act, Mary Poppins, Rock of Ages, Priscilla, On a Clear Day, Phantom, How to Succeed, Mamma Mia, Porgy and Bess, Rent, Million Dollar Quartet, Follies, Avenue Q, Silence, Sistas, Fantasticks, Berenstein Bears, Newsical [25 total].</p>
<p>National Tours Reviewed: Addams Family, American Idiot, Beauty and the Beast, Billy Elliott, Fela, Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, In the Heights, Jersey Boys 1, Jersey Boys 2, La Cage Aux Folles, Les Mis, Lion King, Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, Spamalot, Peter Pan, Shrek, South Pacific, West Side Story, Young Frankenstein [23 total].</p>
<p>Some shows were omitted due to difficulty obtaining online bios (for example, click-through bios would not work for Spiderman in my browser and Voca People has tongue-in-cheek bios). Some shows were omitted because they are dance-only or highly specialized shows (Riverdance, Stomp, etc.).</p>
<p>Cool snapshot, Emsdad, and I agree with all your caveats (MT program size, only includes those who still list school in bio, etc.)! </p>
<p>Does anyone know how many MT students are in a typical class at NYU (including Tisch, Steinhart, etc. and all studios)? </p>
<p>It would be fun to see the same thing done for straight theatre, in case anyone has a lot of spare time on their hands. It would also be cool to see how this changed if one added the other big theatre markets (London, Chicago, LA, etc.) to the picture. ;-D</p>
<p>Somewhat related…I just finished watching the Pilot Episode of SMASH, (you can download it for free right now on iTunes) and in it are two Carnegie Mellon Alumni: Christian Borle and Megan Hilty, and an alum for The Boston Conservatory: Katharine McPhee. I am not too sure where the others went to college, but I do know that Debra Messing went to Brandeis. :-)</p>
<p>Interesting exercise, Emsdad. I know there’s one that you missed for the American Idiot tour. He is a kid I’ve known since birth and he attended the National Theatre School, and having just checked my playbill from seeing the show here, I know he included that in his bio. 
Not one you missed but another actor I know in that cast attended CCM. He graduated a long time ago, though, so doesn’t include that in his bio and hasn’t for some time.</p>
<p>Just an anecdote that there are many paths. Yet another of the many Canadians in that cast, is a boy who attended an arts h/s with one of my Ds. He didn’t attend college because he was booking work professionally while still in h/s and has continued to do so for the past nine years. </p>
<p>I agree with you that it’s fun to look at, and that’s how it should be thought of by applicants.</p>
<p>@alwaysamom: its kind of funny, but I actually had that one on my tally but crossed it off because I had written it down as “National Theatre School” instead of “National Theatre School of Canada” (I was running out of room on my pad). When I went back to do the final talley I thought it was in the UK and crossed it off since I decided not to list the Euro schools. Its even more ironic that I work for Canadian company.</p>
<p>Ironic, indeed, EmsDad. A Canadian company in Texas? Interesting. </p>
<p>The National Theatre School boy is a very talented individual who has been acting since he was a young child. He’s best known, both in the U.S. and Canada, for a TV series he was in but his true passion is the stage, and his music. It’s funny that we’re talking about him because today happens to be his birthday! </p>
<p>Thanks again for the interesting reading.</p>
<p>EmsDad, you always make my day!</p>
<p>EmsDad - I hope your D recognizes how lucky she is to have a parent who is so actively invested in her future (the same goes for the other parents bothering to spend time researching your kid’s options)!</p>
<p>I wish there was a simple way to measure what % of each school’s graduating class is able to build a lifetime career in theatre, versus which schools help land that first Broadway chorus gig, as I know that 's what I most wish for our D. We know lots of people who had a brief Broadway stint followed by a so-so career, and others who never went the Great White Way but have built fantastic, sustainable theatre careers.</p>
<p>@MomCares and @theatremomma: thanks so much for the kind words. I have to admit that I am probably “paying it back” for dropping out of choir and opera chorus in college to focus solely on a technical degree and career. Also, I am probably working through guilt for having lots of doubts when dd initially said that she wanted to go to a PA HS and attend a conservatory program in college - doubts despite the facts that I have a cousin who is an opera singer, a brother who is a director/composer, a sister who was a theatre/debate teacher, a best friend from junior high who “made it” on Broadway (big time stage manager), and on and on. Oh, the shame of it all…</p>
<p>So, the least I can do is gather a bunch of facts for her to help along the way.</p>
<p>I watched her perform this weekend in “Parade” with several BFA students and, as you guys well know, its all worth it when you see what they can do on stage, whether it is on Broadway or a local community theatre. Wherever she ends up, its not the final destination but the journey that makes the trip worthwhile…</p>
<p>MomCares: regarding class size at NYU (and other schools), you have probably seen this before, but here are some numbers regarding class from an old thread (2008):</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/503504-audition-class-size-numbers-11.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/503504-audition-class-size-numbers-11.html</a></p>
<p>These numbers are from a post on Page 11 of the thread (the first number is the estimated number of auditionees and the second number is the class size).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks! So CAP21 and Steinhart have ~80 MTs? Are there other MT studios?</p>
<p>CAP21 is now it’s own program, separate from NYU. There is only one of the studios in NYU that’s MT but you audition and they place you in the studio they perceive you best to fit into. As I’ve heard on here, there is no switching studios. Sometimes there’s an unexpected find in a studio you hadn’t expected.</p>
<p>Thanks… I’d forgotten that CAP21 split off. So now does anyone know how many MTs in Tisch? Still a similar total of ~80 total at NYU, or is it more like 375? I’m still confused. :-)</p>
<p>The numbers in New Studio on Broadway which is the MT studio now at Tisch are pretty similar to how they were in CAP21, the former Tisch MT studio. So, that is about 64 MTs per year who ENTER as freshmen. But some, including my own daughter, and many others, opt to do a different studio for their advanced studio years (junior and/or senior year) and leave the MT studio and so that doesn’t mean 64 graduate from the MT studio. </p>
<p>But you have to realize that at Tisch, there are many students in the acting studios (not all students however) who are very talented in musical theater and chose to do an acting studio or were placed in one. These students still are cast as leads in mainstage musicals at Tisch and I know of many who have been cast on Broadway and other professional musicals. So, not just MT studio kids go onto be in musicals. Also, Tisch MT and Steinhardt MT are very separate schools and programs.</p>
<p>PS, fourkidsmom, Tisch students CAN and often DO change studios after two or three years in their primary studio. They just can’t change their initial studio placement their first two years.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification, Soozievt!</p>