I am looking to understand your perceptions of Musical Theatre within an Education and professional setting and have started my own SIG on facebook with this topic.
I'm hoping to gain a variety of opinions to see how Musical Theatre, whatever your interpretation of it, impacts Education/learning. Please answer from your own perspectives and let me know which industry/field you are in.Please either via facebook or blog let me know your opinions on the following questions:
What is Musical Theatre?
Is there a sustainable place in main stream Education for Musical Theatre?
Do you value Musical Theatre performers as professionals and as a sustainable profession?
Is a three year vocational course enough to prepare graduates for the professional performance industry?
Which is more important professional (life) experience or professional training?
What does a Musical Theatre performer need that any other professional don't in order to be successful?
What is your understanding of Musical Theatre acting compared with straight acting? Do you see the two as the same? If not can both be accomplished by the same person?
Whose image is least important and why from a Singer, a Dancer, an Actor/Actress or Musical Theatre Performer?
I think my line of enquiry will be looking in to how the Arts are necessary and beneficial within academia and beyond in order to sustain a performance career.
Any continuing thoughts on this would be appreciated.
I'll try and answers these now that I am here.
ReplyDeleteMusical theatre is an integrated form of acting, singing and dancing.
I would like there to at least be the option for children to take part in some kind of musical theatre at school. I read book recently that suggested that musical theatre comes out of people's innate need to combine music, words and movement. It is primal and instinctual and is therefore important to everyone. As such I think children should be exposed to it as much as possible. I think however that trying to convince other people of this may prove challenging.
I think it is definitely a good basis with which to send a performer off into the industry. Obviously there is always so much more to learn than you can ever learn at college. I think it is also important to note how much effort performers out into there training before they even thing about going to a vocational course. I did ten years of ballet, jazz, tap, singing, acting, musicals etc. before I was 18 and went to Arts Ed.
I thinking both are equally important. I think in order to be a creative person you have to have depth. You have to have something to draw on and I believe this comes from our life experiences. To be a professional artist however we can't just hope that creative inspiration hits us at the right moments. We have to develop techniques and acquire tools to help us. These are the things we learn in professional training. We learn how to apply our talent in a way that will give us a fruitful career.
I'm not sure anything is 100% exclusive to musical theatre but I think MT performers need tough skin and an ability to handle rejection. I also think they need versatility and an unending belief in themselves.
Acting is acting. Sometimes however the importance of acting in musical theatre is under emphasised and under appreciated.
I think actors and singers will always be able to have a more versatile look than dancers because there a fewer physical demands.
Hope some of this helps :)