Musical Theatre Class: Post 1960's

Musical theatre class meets three times a week.  It is one of those classes that your entire group participates in together.  Our teacher was the magnificent Teri Ralston, who originated roles in several Broadway shows, and has an impressive performance record backing her up, as well as several teaching and performance degrees.

F1 Musical Theatre Class

Curriculum

There are two main projects covered in first semester musical theatre.

The first is the Post 1960’s Repertoire.  All students must research modern musicals and keep a list of songs from at least twelve different shows that they could conceivably perform now or in the next five years.

The second are the performances of three to four songs that you prepare and perform for the teacher and class.  You have a final performance of each song with a set and costumes, plus performances of one of your previously prepared songs for Midterms and Final Demonstrations.

The main focus in musical theatre is on acting, not on your vocal quality.  Finding “actions” – active verbs – to go with every line of lyrics in each song is one of the most emphasized elements.  For each song, the student prepares a Song Dossier, filled with an in-depth analysis of the character, show, and the objectives and actions of the song.

I performed “I Know Things Now” (Into the Woods), “The Portrait” (A … My Name is Alice – Final Demo Song), and “Nobody Steps on Kafritz” (Henry, Sweet Henry)

Type

Whether you like it or not, in musical theatre class, you will be type-casted.  Don’t try to fight it; don’t get angry and huffy when you realize you will never be able play the five-year-old Matilda, and don’t throw a fit when you realize you probably won’t be allowed to perform “Send in the Clowns” as a 19-year-old college student.

In the real world, you will be type-casted.  You could be thrown out of an audition without even having auditioned simply because you do not look the part.  In any audition, the first test to pass is whether or not you look right.  If you don’t, you go home and try again later.

So, in a super fast program like AMDA’s, you are encouraged to find and embrace your “type” so that when you graduate, you will be able to audition for jobs which you actually have a chance at landing. 

My type is the ingénue.  Usually a soprano, the ingénue is the young, pretty idealist of the show.  Examples of the ingénue include Cosette (Les Mis), Johanna (Sweeney Todd), and every Disney Princess ever.

I don’t mind my type.  Ingénues, though young and naïve, are usually the lead or secondary lead characters in shows.  And they’re just so adorable, you can’t hate them.  They can be annoying, but not dislikeable.

It’s kind of sad that I can’t take on more mature, deeper roles simply because I look very young, but in the future, when I start to look older, I may be able to move on to roles like that.  Fingers crossed. 

Lots of Love,

Little Me

First Semester Overview

Semester one of AMDA is officially over.  That’s like being done with my Freshman year.  It’s hard to believe how quickly time has passed, and yet how slowly.  Just a year ago, I was half way through my second semester of senior year in high school, preparing for Skills USA in the culinary academy, competing in figure skating competitions, just coming back from Metro’s High School Culinary invitational with a gleaming silver medal … time is a fickle thing.

With the 10-day long vacation, I decided I should write about my classes and what prospective students can expect from AMDA’s curriculum.

I’ll start off by saying this.

AMDA NY’s two-year integrated musical theatre program teaches its students how to perform in theatre such as Broadway shows.  Every class is performance-based.  Musical theatre history, stage production (such as costumes, set, lights, etc,) directing, general ed, and other classes involving mostly reading and paperwork are not a part of the curriculum.  It’s a conservatory.  A trade school.  You learn how to do it.

If you aspire to be a director, a playwright, solely a singer, or anything that is not a triple-threat theatre performer, I would advise looking elsewhere. 

That being said, for those who want to be on Broadway and have the ability to do the extra research without a class to teach them, AMDA has a top-notch program.

I’ll give a brief overview of the first-semester curriculum.

Dance

You have eight hours of dance classes every week, which sounds like a lot, but is actually not nearly enough, or so all of the teachers constantly remind us.  You have to be willing to put in the work outside of class and practice on your own if you want to be ready for the real world when Fourth semester comes and goes. 

Classes include Jazz, Tap, Ballet, and Theatre Dance, which is basically walking in an extremely detailed stylized manner. 

There are four to five levels of dance, depending on how large your semester is, and you will be placed in whichever level they feel you are ready to be in based on your placement performance after gaining entrance to the school.  Almost every level learns the same routines and techniques, but the speed and complexity of the material they learn varies.

Other Performance

First Semester Integrated Students take Acting 1: Foundations, Musical Theatre: Post 1960’s, Voice Production and Speech, and Sight-Singing all of which meet two to three times a week, as well as Individual Voice, which is a one-on-one class with your own personal voice instructor that takes place for one hour once a week.

Also, first semester integrated students take a class called Musical Theatre Film Lab.  It is the only non-performance class taught at AMDA.  This serves as a kind of musical theatre history course taught through recordings of musical theatre since the very beginning.  It meets once a week for one hour, and you can take out of it as much or as little as you are willing to stay awake for.

Extra-Curriculars

One really great thing about AMDA is that it offers many, many chances to take extra classes, mostly including precious performance opportunities, all of which are free. 

I took Composition this semester, where I was actually able to write and perform my own song.

Students are encouraged to go to Dance Review, held four times a week which goes over everything learned in theatre dance.  VPS Review and Sight-Singing Review are also encouraged, as well as American Standard 15-minute coaching sessions (for VPS)

Other extra-curricular opportunities include, but are not limited to: Stage Combat, Clowning, Dance Workshops (auditioned extra dance classes), Opera Lab, Playwriting, Dialects, Tumbling/Gymnastics, Café Performance Series, and several others.

Over the next week, I will write detailed descriptions of the work and curriculum in each class, and overall life as an AMDA student.  Stay tuned!

All my love,

Little Me

Fairytale Friday

$32 Rear Mezzanine Seats

Before: 7:20

After: 7:40

How Sweet the Sound of Silence

The man who lives across the street from me yells.

A lot.

When I say, “across the street,” I mean that if I look out my window, I can see directly through his window and into his apartment.  There’s a reason I keep my blinds pulled down at all times.

I can’t tell if he’s constantly practicing the same very emotional monologue, or if he’s screaming at a person, or if he’s just crazy and yells at the walls, but it always sounds exactly the same, with the same inflexions and punctuation.  After half an hour of listening to it without understanding any words, it gets a bit annoying.  Especially at 12:30 a.m.

Add that to the sounds of the cars passing by, the girl who lives next to me who talks loudly on her phone at the most absurd hours of the day, the screaming teenagers in the hallway, and the people going in and out of the shower right next to my room and you get …

Noise.

Welcome to New York.  You learn quickly here to appreciate the silent moments in life, for they are few and far between.

Wishing you the sweetest silence,

Little Me

Final Demos Begin ...

Theater Dance is one of the many classes we take here at AMDA, and for it, we learned five separate dances to be performed for our final demos.  As a learning tool for the dance "Satin Doll", our teacher sped up the pattern, set it to music, and told us to have fun with it.

This was the result:

Theater kids will be theater kids.  Satin Doll is about ten times slower and set to smooth jazz, but it will stay stuck in our minds for years to come thanks to this faster, more fun version.  We'll jump into it on the sidewalk, in the grocery store, even at school dances.  

Final demos begin tomorrow, which means that our regular classes are over for the first semester, replaced with two weeks of rocketing stress levels, makeshift makeup classes, and extra rehearsals leading into a ten-day break before second semester begins.

Wish me luck!

Love,

Little Me.