Music Theatre - PROFESSIONAL OPTION
Course Consultant:
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Stephen Brooker
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This professional option embraces all of the theatrical disciplines that contribute to the production of music theatre. It is designed specifically for students aiming at a professional career in this aspect of theatre, which demands a high level of practical expertise in a wide variety of skills.
The curriculum consists of intensive courses in acting, improvisation,
singing, voice, speech, stage fighting and music theatre repertoire. These are supplemented by the dance techniques that are required by music theatre students such as ballet, jazz and tap. Students have contact with potential employers through studio based workshops and master-classes, which are a regular feature of their training.
Specialist singing courses build on the students' knowledge of the musical repertoire for popular theatre, including composers such as Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Jerry Herman, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The classwork ensures that the students have their own natural skills developed and that they have the technical foundations to sustain a professional career. Regular private coaching means that students are fully prepared tor public performances and auditions.
Drama studies naturalise acting technique, so that it becomes undetectable in performance. The course aims to promote the technical skills, intellectual grasp and the physical and artistic maturity that are required to work successfully in the professional theatre. Voice and speech coaching also plays an important part in the final year. It reinforces the work covered in the first two years and ensures that each student has a flexible, well modulated voice and is therefore able to tackle a wide variety of roles and possesses the strength and skill to project in large auditoria.
These different disciplines are united in the rehearsal and performance of the music theatre repertoire, which commences in the 1920s and proceeds via Rodgers and Hammerstein to the most recent rock musicals. This work promotes an awareness of both the content and style of these different forms of music theatre.
Classical ballet continues to provide a basis for sound dance technique, emphasising the secure performance of the basic vocabulary. Isolation jazz dance technique adds interest, style and flair to the performance and staging of songs and dances from music theatre with its emphasis on co-ordination, fluency and presentational skills. Dance and tap for music theatre are essential skills for students seeking employment in the commercial world.
"... a thorough preparation of the student"
Performance with : SEEDTIME
(photo: Javine Hylton as Nala, with the Lionesses, in a scene from Disney's The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre, London.
Photo by Catherine Ashmore, copyright Disney)