Acting Intensive: Musical Theater Performance Project

Catalog description

This course will explore the actors' relationship to song through the creation of a musical theater performance project, which will be shared on the final day of the course. Singing actors will have the chance to learn the tools of song analysis, expand their vocal expressivity, collaborate with professional musicians, engage with physical and lyrical storytelling, and develop a powerful and authentic ensemble ethos. Professors Ben Steinfeld and Jessie Austrian (co-artistic directors of Fiasco Theater) will bring together the pedagogical threads of their acting and voice classes in an interdisciplinary journey through the musical theater form. Readings will be taken from texts that may include Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity by Raymond Knapp, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical by Stacy Wolf, and more.