r/MusicalTheatre

I'm heavily considering going to the Spring Awakening open call on Friday. I am 32, but I read extremely, extremely young. Do you think I would be still okay to go?

Hello any tips for learning a lead role super quick?? I have such short time and I’m so nervous I’ve never even played a lead before lol!

So I’ve been working on my voice for a year (albeit inconsistently). My voice teacher says i’m a tenor, or a baritenor at the lowest, but I can’t belt an A4. I can’t even sing it. Should a tenor be able to do that right from the start? I know I can expand it, because when I first started singing my highest note was a B3; then up to a D4, then an F#4, and a few days ago I worked my way up to a G4 in chest. Any thoughts or advice?

Hi there, I’m a rising senior in high school this year. I have been looking for colleges for a while but have yet to find one that really offers what I want.

Some things about me: I have a 4.1 gpa, and I’m tied to be valedictorian of my class when I graduate next may. I’ve taken every AP class offered at my school, and I work very hard. I am the NHS president. I have about 12 college credits at the moment. I’ve been doing theater for over ten years, and I’ve been in 39 shows over that time. I started out in ensembles and such, but soon I built up trust with directors, and I have been a lead/supporting character in shows since. I have 250 volunteer hours and I volunteer at community theaters to help direct their youth drama camps. Our school has faced crazy budget cuts, so I will be taking over the choir teaching position without pay on top of classes this year.

My goal after college is to attempt to work in theater in some capacity be it directing (music or standard) or performing. I would also like to have the option to work as either a high school/university teacher/professor, likely in musical theater or something heavily related to that.

I am looking for a university that can allow me to double major in Musical Theater and Education (of some sort).
Please comment if you know of any universities or colleges that would fit me well. Thank you so much

TLDR: i am looking for college recommendations for double majoring in musical theater and education. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

There’s something I keep noticing with musical theatre recordings that’s hard to ignore.

Some shows don’t just sound different, they stay different in your memory, even when the music alone isn’t doing anything special on paper. It’s like your brain attaches extra weight to certain moments, but not always for obvious reasons.

I started paying attention to how much staging, color, or even just small visual themes affect the way I remember songs after listening. A few cast recordings hit way harder later, not because I listened more carefully, but because I could mentally picture a consistent visual style around them.

At some point I started pairing recordings with quick visual mockups just to see how much it changes perception. Toneframer ended up being something I used in that process, mostly for turning short audio sections into something visual enough to rewatch instead of just replaying.

What surprised me is how often the visuals influenced which songs I kept returning to, even when the audio itself stayed exactly the same.

I’m curious if this is just me overthinking it, or if others notice the same thing with certain shows where the “look” of the production becomes part of the soundtrack in your head.

hi i, 24f, have an audition for rent on july 25th and one of the requirements is to prepare/bring a one 16-32 bar contemporary cut in the style of the show so i was just wondering what are some same style songs that i could sing for my audition? thanks! i’m an alto btw

Need suggestions. Going thru it rn.

My local theatre is having auditions for The Rocky Horror this month and I desperately want Columbia she's been my dream role for ages. If you've played Columbia please comment with what song got you the role or if you have any suggestions I would love to hear. My plan right now is to sing What I Know Now from Beetlejuice in a nasal/Columbia voice.

Are there apps that a music director can use to scan music and have it break out individual voice parts? So far, the possibilities appear to be PalyScore 2 / ScanScore / SoundSlice / Scan2Notes / Sheet Music Scanner.

Example: If the piano/vocal score I am working from shows multiple women's voices as block chords (and not split out on individual staves), will any of these programs be able to pull out the individual voices?

Are there other options other than the ones shown? Many thanks!

I’m a male auditioning with the opening 32 bar cut of old red hills of home from parade but for that song specifically do you think it would be to difficult for an pianist to read since I know auditioning with JRB is usually frowned upon?

I’m 19F living in the UK. Moving into the adult theatre and acting world has been really tough for me. Recently I’ve had a lot of imposter syndrome after a really bad experience in my last theatre group.

I’ve been lucky enough to have some professional jobs. Including a role in the west end when I was 16. And being in a touring play at 17. As well as lead,supporting and featured roles in films from 14-17. After 17 though I’ve only had one professional job which was a commercial for a few days.

It wasn’t really and issue I wanted to develop my skills before entering the adult acting and theatre world anyway and I felt really confident in myself at that point after so many achievements. I wasn’t able to go to college while in the west end show and the tour. But I decided to take a break after the tour to develop my skills and applied to Drama School. I got rejected. I was shocked I didn’t get accepted into even one.

I decided to develop my skills in adult amateur theatre groups. One we did a production of Beauty And The Beast. I got cast as the Beast. As there was no males in the production I felt this was really miscast due to the fact I was 18 and I’m not a baritone. But I was happy to get such a big good role. And it felt like such a full circle moment as my first production was chip at 7 years old in my youth theatre group.

But with the beast it was difficult for me to play him. I couldn’t hit the notes and they wouldn’t let me change them. It was so bad that the director asked me if this is my first ever production. I said no my first production was actually beauty and the beast and she said “oh did you play a villager or a fork or something?” And I said “no I played chip” she then kept pushing being like “aww have you not done a production since?” And I said “no I’ve done a lot of roles. Since I was 7 in theatre groups and professionally.”

She still kept being rude asking if it was playing an elf at a Christmas event or something as a few people in the group had done that. I said “no I performed ____ in the west end” she was shocked.

During the rehearsal process she kept making me feel bad about being the weakest link in the cast. I hadn’t been to open about my professional roles so as not to seem like I’m bragging but after that she kept bringing it up in front of everyone in rehearsals. For example one time I touched my hair during rehearsal and she paused our run to say “why are you touching you hair? You say you performed on the west end would you touch your hair on the west end stage.” I awkwardly laughed and she asked everyone else if they’d touch their hair during a scene if they was on the west end like I was. They shaked their head.

There was also a time I forgot my line (we weren’t off book yet but I had memorised it all to the point I decided to try it without my script and I’d forgotten that one line) I improvised and she stopped the scene again and got annoyed saying that’s not the correct line and if I’m “such a professional” how don’t I know my lines. I apologised. But I honestly felt really embarrassed.

During the rehearsal process too there was a 17 year old who was playing chip who was better than me. She was really talented as well as the right fit for Chip. During the process she got accepted to a drama school for the next school year. Everyone was proud of her as was I. But the director said “wow you’ll got into drama school before the west end star over here.” And started saying about her being a really good singer compared to me. Since the production has been over I’ve not done anything theatre or acting related.

There’s been a few times I’ve got the courage to audition for both professional and amateur theatre productions and even student films and it’s gotten to the day before the audition and I’ve had a panic attack and not auditioned. Or filmed my self tape and hated it so not submitted.

Even with drama school I didn’t apply for this year. Submissions are over. I felt too self conscious and untalented.

I have a little bit of a random question. I'm listening to a great musical theater podcast, which talks about a lot of musical hits and misses. The host typically talks about how many performances the musical would run for before being closed and a bunch of numbers will be tossed around.

This got me thinking about how many performances would mark a musical as a success and how many would mark it as a flop. Sometimes people will say this musical ran for an x amount of performances before being closed and it'd be tough to get an idea of whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Obviously I know that if a musical runs for 100 performances before closing, it's a flop. If it runs for over a thousand, it's a smash hit. I'm mostly curious about the middle ground. If a musical runs for, say, 500 performances, would that be marked as a success or not? I'm just wondering about the general scale.

Hey y’all! I was just booked in my second professional show ever! And first professional musical. Cool! On my form, I specified being a baritone range singer. In auditions, I sang the best I could, cracked a bit on the top note, but they loved my acting and gave me the part. Now I’m prepping for the show and singing this top note feels impossible. I’ll keep working on it- but I wanted to ask: what is the precedent for asking the musical director if we could transpose the key a bit lower? For reference: it is Sondheim.

I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of professional actors / directors.

Thanks!

Source material for new musicals has always been pretty impressively varied, from Ancient Greece and Rome, Shakespeare, pop and rock music, literary classics, biographies, and of course, brand new ideas. I think Hadestown speaks very strongly to the notion that even seemingly-stuffy or offputting content can be made to soar musically.

If it were possible, what play or movie would you like to see transformed into a musical?

I've always thought Angels in America is one of the most brilliant plays ever written, and like Ragtime, resonates incredibly with our world 30+ years later. Its very theatrical moments like the Angel's visit and other fantasy elements lend themselves so well to musical theatre, not to mention the sheer scope of the play. It would be, admittedly, a tall order, one which probably no one could write except Kushner himself with Joe Mantello directing. But Kushner rewrote West Side Story for Spielberg, and Mantello directed Wicked! I think Iike to see Adam Guettel's ideas for the music.

One can dream! What would be your dream?

Berkeley Rep - Closing Night

Hi, Im a 17M and i just moved to New York. I just graduated and im not auditioning for any shows but im basically taking a gap year to train and master my craft before auditioning for schools because i believe that i should go to college for this. I have done 10 shows beforehand and i just need some advice because i feel like im not doing enough to prepare. Is there anything I can do?

I have a collection of programs from shows I’ve seen over the years, they are currently sitting in a box but I want something better to protect/ organise them

I’ve seen people have binders with programs but the Australian programs are such awkward sizes

Does anyone have any tips or ideas?