After teaching theatre for over 37 years, I retired as of August 1, 2020. It was a wonderful ride and is full of such good memories. What I would like to do is to convert this blog that originally was a diary of all my class doings - and make it now a daily reflection on what it is like to be retired and some of the highlights that have stayed with me from the theatre classroom. I hope you enjoy!
Preface: I am no musical theatre guy myself. I love them. I rush to see them in NYC and other places – – I have even directed a few – very few – with modest success for a tyro. But, I will never be a musical theatre teacher; I leave that work for others.
That said, today I had the opportunity of coaching one of our currently most successful musical theatre students on a monologue that he was using in preparation for a pending audition. Read more
The other option increasingly used by BFA programs is to choose classes as “families” or ensembles. In this model, a BFA program would find a group of 15-20 freshman that would represent a variety of ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and gender. They work to get the most DIVERSE, talented class possible. This group of students are chosen VERY CAREFULLY in that they do not plan to whittle this class down. Read more
Back to School for 2016!!!
College auditions are just around the corner and all is a bit shaky with the seniors. Today’s topic was the concept of “cut programs” vs. “ensemble programs”. When I was the age of these students and setting off for a BFA program – all of the leading schools were known as “cut schools.” In essence they would take on roughly 50 students as freshman and then cut the class to 30 as sophomores and then cut to 15 as juniors and ideally graduate around 10 students. Some of the advantages to the cut system are: Read more