29 courses with the subject MT, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
MT 0004Acting 4, Devised Practice
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester This course will be a hands-on dive into the experience of creating a work of Devised Theatre. Each class will begin with a warm-up that will alternate between technical exercises (physical, vocal, etc.) and investigatory (sensory awareness and concentration exercises). Eventually students will be in charge of leading their own warm-ups. The body of the course will be devoted to the creation of original Devised Theatre group pieces. Devised Theatre is essentially ensemble-work and a major theme of the course will be the techniques of partnering (duos, trios and large groups). Students will create scenes, songs and movement. Writing will be an essential component of the course. Students will be writing in each class -“Devising” C ourse De scrip tions 145
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester The fifth acting class in the MT eight-semester acting progression and is focused on acting technique for the camera with an emphasis on self-recorded auditions. Adding on camera technique to scene study & repertoire enhances students’ development of a toolbox of acting techniques. This course will provide students with a practical method of applying scene study acting skills for the camera through intensive scene work. In addition to continued training in scene study and repertoire, classes will target the application of techniques specific to acting for the camera. Additionally, techniques for recording virtual auditions will be discussed and detailed. Students will have online access to a variety of audition scenes from television/film projects. Students will present multiple times during 146 C ourse De scrip tions the semester. They will be expected to memorize, prepare, and present scenes and participate in follow-up, in-class scene work.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester The semester begins with scene work, with a focus on making choices from a wide-ranging repertoire of plays and playwrights, and attention to the actors’ passionate connection to the selected material. Next, each student prepares a Shakespeare sonnet. This assignment is followed by monologue work, with each actor selecting and preparing two contrasting monologues, which can be confidently presented at auditions. Each actor will perform their audition pieces before a panel of professionals in the last class. MT0007-0008, Acting 7 & 8
Performance Technique 1 & 2 3 hrs weekly/2 credits per semester This course is designed for first-year students entering the four-year Musical Theatre program at the Manhattan School of Music. It provides a comprehensive exploration of the essential skills and techniques required for effective song performance in Musical Theatre. Through a series of in-depth sessions and practical exercises, students will engage with the following key topics: • Methods for learning and internalizing a song • The structural components of musical theatre songs • Professional vocabulary for song interpretation and performance • Researching a song’s historical and contextual background • Writing analytically and critically about musical theatre • Engaging with lyrics as a form of monologue • Techniques for learning music accurately • Understanding music as a layer of subtext • Mastery of natural diction and phrasing • The concept of “the moment before” and its significance in performance • Identifying character objectives: What does the character want? What obstacles do they face? • Developing tactical actions to achieve character goals • Understanding transformation: What changes by the end of the song? • The importance of grounded stillness and focused energy in performance • Managing physicality: What to do with your hands and body in performance • Exploring the physical life of a song and its connection to emotional expression • The craft of storytelling through both text and music 144 C ourse De scrip tions This course will develop students’ ability to approach musical theatre songs with depth, technical precision, and emotional authenticity, providing them with foundational skills for their professional careers.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits per semester This course is designed to teach acting technique for singing a Musical Theatre song. We will cover songs and musicals from a variety of time periods, from the Golden Age Era (30s, 40s, and 50s) through the present day. Class work will emphasize the importance of the art of story-telling through song to dramatize a musical moment. Techniques to be explored include: intention (what do I want?), obstacles (what’s in my way?), moment before, personalization, text analysis, tactics, stakes, and musical cues.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester This course will focus on the acting of scene into song in the musical theatre. In addition to focusing on the acting essentials of the libretto, this course will focus on the motivated transition of speaking into singing. We will also underline bringing SELF and individual artistry to roles in the musical theatre. This industry is in search of originals, and each artist needs to find his/her/their unique voice in each role.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester This course prepares the student for professional musical theater auditions by exploring musical theater genres, audition etiquette and comportment, and encouraging the student to find audition material that expresses their essence and individuality.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester New Musical Theatre (NMT) Lab is a performance- based course, in which students perform newly- written musical theatre pieces on a weekly basis. While traditional musical theatre education heavily relies on “the canonî, the current professional climate often asks of the performer to workshop and learn completely new material in a rapid timeframe and with little assistance. The goal of this seminar is to help prepare the students for the expectations they will be met with once they embark on their professional journey. This course demands that the students learn and memorize new songs in a prompt manner, while making artistic choices and decisions on their own. Each performance is discussed and critiqued by myself, and occasionally by a guest artist from the industry. The songs included in the course are handpicked from projects written by the new generation of writers, and have yet to be published or produced. Each student will receive their song 48 hours before the seminar, and will be expected to perform the material at the highest level as demanded in the professional world. The musical sequences grow in length and difficulty throughout the semester, and the course culminates in large ensemble performances. MT0001-0002-0003 Acting 1, 2 & 3 3 hrs weekly/3 credits per semester Acting 1, 2, and 3 is a progressive system of structured exercises (which leads into scene work) for developing concentration and imagination, stimulating instincts and impulses, in order for the student to be able to create believable, authentic, embodied behavior in relation to the imaginary circumstances they are involved with. This approach trains the actor to “live truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” to discover personally meaningful points of view with respect to the written, or improvised, word and to express spontaneous human reactions and authentic emotion with the utmost sense of truth.
4.5 hrs weekly/2 credits per semester Musical Theatre Dance will be an informed and inclusive course that will focus on theatrical jazz technique, foundational ballet elements, and essential movement principles for the musical theatre performer. Each class will begin with a comprehensive warm-up emphasizing alignment, isolations, some ballet technique, dynamic stretching, core engagement, and conditioning, followed by across-the-floor progressions designed to build foundational jazz technique and coordination while establishing the groundwork for all theatrical dance styles. Classes will culminate in musical theatre dance combinations spanning ballet, jazz, and contemporary styles, inspired by influential musical theatre choreographers of the past and present and adapted to meet the evolving demands of today’s MT dance landscape. While rooted in technique, emphasis will be placed on storytelling through movement. Within a positive, supportive, and encouraging environment, students will build foundational technique and confidence, allowing them artistic freedom to create their own individualized movement and the skills necessary to pursue further study in MT Dance styles. (May be repeated for credit.)
1.5 hrs weekly/1 credits/Fall semester This course serves to introduce freshman to the discipline of musical theatre as practiced in the MSM Musical Theatre department and in the professional world. Topics include audition preparation, union overview, the theatrical community, theater roles outside of acting, vocal health, rehearsal technique, research skills, community engagement, and significant current industry players.
3 hrs weekly/2 credits/Fall semester Through the exploration of a wide variety of plays, we will learn how to breakdown and analyze the essential elements in a script, developing techniques for fully understanding the world in which the character exists and how to bring that character to life.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester Course not offered every year This course is designed to provide an introduction to directing for the stage. This is a practical and hands-on course that guides students through the directing process. The students will gain knowledge in the following areas: Research, Working with Set Designer, Working with Casting Designer, Staging 2-Person Scenes, Working with Costume Designer, Working With Lighting, Projection, and Sound Designers, Working with Actors, and Working with Artistic Directors. This course will address each step of the directing process though class lecture/ discussions, class presentations, and in-class scene directing as well as outside preparation and rehearsal of scenes.
3 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester An introductory course that is designed to increase the beauty, range of expression, and tone of the performer’s voice. This course focuses on breath control, phonation, resonation, and articulation. This course addresses: • Anatomy and physiology of the speech mechanism • Vocal hygiene, voice pathologies, and treatment for vocal hyperfunction and injury • Basic principles and practices from the Lessac and Linklater voice techniques for the performing artist
3 hrs weekly/1 credit per semester This is a two-semester course in applied musicianship using the repertoire of musical ensembles, including unisons, duets, trios, quartets and larger ensembles. It also teaches the particular skills sets necessary to be an effective member of any ensemble, such as tuning, phrasing and blending. Finally, it is also an historical survey of the genre, including listening to recordings of iconic performances. At the end of this course students will be confident musicians and polished ensemble singers.
Form 1 & 2 3 hrs weekly/3 credits per semester This course is designed to give students a broad understanding of the history of the American musical theatre, starting with a look at the show that is often referred to as the “first” American musical, The C ourse De scrip tions 147
3 hrs weekly/3 credits per semester A two-semester intensive study of the fundamentals of music theory, sight-singing and aural skills. Students will learn music notation, rhythms, all meters, key signatures, and intervals, and will be introduced to chords and basic harmonic theory. The emphasis of the class is building sight-singing fluency and confidence with a focus on real-world applications. In the second semester, students will learn techniques of score analysis as a means to more deeply understand the composer’s dramatic intentions. MT0120-0121 Tap 4.5 hrs weekly/2 credits per semester Tap skills are introduced at the beginning level and advance to a solid understanding of the technique and the history of this discipline. Tap dancing relies on a fundamental knowledge of various rhythms and styles. The student will learn basic tap steps, rhythms and choreography. (May be repeated for credit.) (We will also offer Tap as an elective in spring) MT0100-0101 Ballet 4.5 hrs weekly/2 credits per semester Fundamentals of ballet technique concentrating on alignment, strength, flexibility, rotation, and weight change.This class will consist of the practice of barre work, center floor work, traveling patterns across the floor and conditioning exercises. (May be repeated for credit.)
4 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester Senior Showcase is the culmination of four years of musical theatre training. In the course faculty and students will create an end of year production for presentation to industry professionals.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester Course not offered every year This course considers musicals from the last 10 years, examining them both structurally and musically. Shows will be studied in two-week increments, exploring both macro show structure and specific songs as they relate to the form historically. What is the “I Want” song in A Strange Loop (2019 [Pulitzer Prize]) and how does it relate to traditional “I Want” songs? How does music function in The Band’s Visit (2016) and how does it relate to historic Golden C ourse De scrip tions 149
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester This course will examine Stephen Sondheim’s life and his work, with detailed song analysis and extensive coaching in solo performance and scene-into-song group work. Sondheim collaborated with book-writers George Furth, James Goldman, John Weidman, James Lapine, Hugh Wheeler, and Larry Gelbart, so these artists will be examined as well. In-class study will expand upon the scene-into-song coursework offered in the Junior year Acting for Musical Theatre course, and the semester will culminate in the presentation of a student-generated Final Project.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester In this course, we’ll delve into the overlooked and misunderstood craft of writing musical theatre books. We’ll go over the fundamentals of musical theatre show structure, how a book writer collaborates with songwriter(s), and the different ways of making a musical. We’ll look at examples of great musical theatre books, both original and adapted, and writing exercises through the semester will culminate in a final project: beginning your own book for a musical.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester Course not offered every year If we talk about the musical theatre, we are mostly talking about adaptation. Original musicals are not unheard of, but they are less common than adaptations. Most musicals are adaptated from other 150 C ourse De scrip tions artistic works in various media: films, plays, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and even visual art. In this class, we will study both musical adaptations and their source material, in order to understand how musical theater writers turn one work of art into another, how they maintain the spirit of a source while they create something new. We will approach adaptation broadly and look at all writing, even things deemed “original,” as adapted from something—an image, a feeling, a true story. We will look at what musical theatre writers change, what the keep, what they add, and what they subtract. We will look at both classic, canonical works of musical theatre and at lesser-known shows, some of them by writers from and depicting underrepresented voices in the musical theatre. With an eye toward cultural inclusion, we will discuss the intersectionality and cultural specifity of various musical theatre subjects and structures, and how these subjects and structures are products of systems; we will discuss how some writers, particularly globalmajority writers, navigate or shake off these structures. We will confront and discuss the paucity of global-majority writers in the musical theatre, especially in shows that are about characters of color and even more especially in shows that are adaptations. We will cover at length the process of securing underlying rights to source material and how that process involves many gatekeepers; we will discuss how and why the business of all that might have excluded and continue to exclude certain kinds of writers. Throughout the semester, you will try your hand at adaptation through multiple exercises that engage the muscles needed to adapt from one form to another and to do it with originality. The course will culminate in your engagement with a project of your own, adapted from some preexisting source, and we will use an expansive definition of adaptation here. Perhaps you adapt a movie, or perhaps your adaptation takes a more unusual route.
3 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester Tap skills are introduced at the beginning level and advance to a solid understanding of the technique and the history of this discipline. Tap dancing relies on a fundamental knowledge of various rhythms and styles. The student will learn basic tap steps, rhythms and choreography. (May be repeated for credit.) ORCH E STR AL PE RFORMAN CE Major Lesson/Repertoire Coaching (course code varies by major): 1 hr weekly/5 credits per semester.
1 hr weekly/3 credits per semester Private instruction in proper vocal performance technique, including proper execution, diction and interpretation, performance skills, repertoire selection and stylization. Private voice lessons are critical for the technical and interpretive development of the professional singer. Your Voice Faculty emphasizes healthy practice techniques that preserve vocal health and develop technical flexibility and vocal longevity.
