Course Syllabus
Course: THEA 2443
Division: Fine Arts, Comm, and New MediaDepartment: Theater Arts
Title: Acting for Musical Theatre
Semester Approved: Spring 2021
Five-Year Review Semester: Fall 2025
End Semester: Fall 2026
Catalog Description: Five, six, seven, eight! Acting for musical theatre is a course offered which will let you explore the theatrical art form through song, dance, and character. Learn the history and the power of this theatrical genre through jazz steps while belting broadway's hits and obscure misses. Work as an ensemble to perform scenes and songs from the Great White Way, right here at Snow.This course offers students and opportunity to develop skills in merging three separate art forms into one (acting, singing and dancing). It provides opportunity for students to learn to communicate through musical theatre.
Semesters Offered: Fall, Spring
Credit/Time Requirement: Credit: 3; Lecture: 3; Lab: 0
Repeatable: Yes.
Prerequisites: None
Corequisites: None
Justification: This course responds to the unique need of the Theatre Department to develop competent and qualified performers in musical theatre productions. Similar courses are taught at most other institutions in the state.
General Education Outcomes:
3: A student who completes the GE curriculum can draw from multiple disciplines to address complex problems. Students will demonstrate a multiple disciplinary approach through studio work, in-class exercises, rehearsals, performances and critiques of the musical theatre genre. This ubiquitous form of theatre combines performative elements and practices from the stage as well as vocal music production/technique as well as various dance styles and genres. The class culminates in a production in which all students will demonstrate their proficiency and improvement by synthesizing these three aspects into a single performance.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Improve proficiency in vocal work, dancing skill, and acting technique for performance, specifically the musical theatre genre. Students will demonstrate improved acting, vocal, and dancing technique in class attendance and participation along with required live performances produced by the class as members of a group or team. In addition, students will demonstrate improvement through performance proficiency evaluations and examinations.
Expand the ability to act while singing and dancing while maintaining a clear voice and good projection. Students will demonstrate the ability to be clearly heard and understood while acting, singing and dancing in multiple styles. Dance styles include: classical, contemporary, belt, legit, tap, jazz, and ballet. Vocal styles include: legit, classical, contemporary, and belt. These performances will be produced both in class and as part of an evening production for a live audience.
Build teamwork and collaboration skills in performance. Students will demonstrated engaged teamwork and collaboration in rehearsal and performance as well as in evaluation of other performing teams. A possible review/showcase at the end of the semester will reinforce student's creative collaboration skills.
Reinforce the ability to give and receive constructive criticism. Students will demonstrate improvement through performance proficiency evaluations, examinations, and production responses.
Content:
Course will include lectures, readings, demonstrations, studio work, group activities, discussions, rehearsal and performance techniques. Topics covered will include: vocal technique, dance technique, acting technique, dance styles (tap, jazz, ballet, contemporary), singing styles (legit, classical, contemporary, belt), acting while singing and dancing, and vocal projection.Diversity and Inclusion:This course advocates for choices which open discourse and affect positive change, while supporting rigorous cultural specificity to remove generalizations, harmful appropriation, and divisive depictions. When approaching scene work (whether assigned or student-chosen) this class advocates for color-conscious casting, and a sensitivity toward portrayals of all individuals. When possible it will give a voice to artists, cultures, and perspectives not traditionally dominant in the classroom and in the film industry.
Key Performance Indicators:
Attendance/Participation 30 to 50%
Performance Evaluation (Dance, Voice, Acting proficiency) 20 to 30%
Exams (Mid-term and Final) 20 to 30%
Performance Critiques 10 to 20%
Representative Text and/or Supplies:
This course does not require texts. Reflective texts include:
Acting in Musical Theatre : A Comprehensive Course, Joe Deer (current edition).
Showtime: History of the Broadway Musical Theater, Larry Stempel (current edition).
Pedagogy Statement:
Course will include lectures, readings, demonstrations, studio work, group activities, discussions, rehearsal and performance techniques. Instruction will center on the introduction of the musical genre from a theatrical perspective, with background history, current trends, and effective story-telling techniques employed for the dramatic art form. Topics covered may include: vocal production, introductory vocal styles, physical acting techniques, introduction to prominent dance styles in musical theatre, direct address, Fosse's "I am" and "I want" songs.Diversity and Inclusion:As the state of the entertainment industry is a pathway to positive steps of inclusion, representation, and equity, this class invites all to interrogate themselves, institutions, and systems in order to disrupt the structural inequalities and systemic barriers that exclude culturally underrepresented communities from participation through honest discourse. Instruction of this course will nurture talent and skill all areas of theatre based solely upon merit and achievement, and ensure everyone has access to resources for their growth, success, and expression, while working to remove impediments to that access.
Instructional Mediums:
Lecture
Maximum Class Size: 30
Optimum Class Size: 20