Musical Theatre Workshop

Music is the soul of musical theatre. In this workshop, you will work with the attitude of a musical theatre actor in order to integrate music into you performance and find what motivates your character. One harmonic change, or the sudden shift of orchestration, shows indication of character change and development. The actor should utilize music for support and to convey emotion. Music is the outward expression of a character’s inner monologue. The job of the actor is to listen to the music and articulate these emotion.

Students in this workshop will notice that the starting point for addressing musical theatre songs is different from pop and R&B. For example, riffs, which are popular in pop music, are not used as heavily in musical theatre. Any vocal effect within the music must have a justification that comes from the connection to the character. No stylistic choice is chosen blindly. The interpretation of songs involves entering a kinesthetic awareness, an emotional connection, respiration, imagination, and sensitivity. In this way, one of the main objectives is that the voice quality (belting, legit, conversational, etc.) must suit the song, scene partner, and context of the musical in order to express all of the character’s nuances.

We train you as if your end goal was Broadway. To do this, you will work holistically on voice interpretation with two professional teachers. You will work on concrete musical scenes in order to deepen various interpretive styles (tragic, dramatic, comic), and you will have direct access to our stage that is equipped with lights and sound. Moreover, these scenes will be chosen to help achieve the objectives of this workshop.

We want you to build a strong repertoire that will help you in future casting. A musical repertoire is like an actor’s portfolio. To be properly prepared for auditions, you must have at least one ballad and one uptempo song from different types of Broadway music (early operetta, contemporary, pop-rock, etc.). You’ll master a variety of songs that fit your personality and enjoy singing overall by the end of this workshop.

The objectives of this workshop:

• Use correct vocal technique for interpreting musical theatre songs
•  Be familiar with different vocal qualities
•  Listen to music and integrate it in the interpretation of the character
•  Practice interpretive work
•  Recognize the diversity of musical theatre songs
•  Learn to build a rich, varied repertoire
•  Acquire excellent stage presence
•  Learn to work under pressure of performing onstage and facing the audience