Auditions after 1st or 2nd yr

CanadianMTgirl
Sun, 17 May 2015 03:12:49 +0000

When I first registered on CC, I was fourteen years old and absolutely CERTAIN that I wanted to major in MT when I got to college. I always considered myself very lucky that I knew exactly what I wanted to do “when I grew up”, because I know committing to a major is something that a lot of my peers struggle with. But you know, it’s interesting. I am so happy that I picked the major I did (especially after having to study something else at an institution I didn’t particularly want to attend for a year before I got to major in MT due to finances–because by the time I got to majoring in MT, I knew I really wanted it), but the longer I’m in it, the more I want to broaden my horizons. And I don’t think this is something I could have predicted by attending a summer program or anything else that would have given me the BFA experience before college, because I THRIVE on being a BFA MT student: I love waking up early for dance classes, spending all day in the Fine Arts Center, sometimes not getting back to my dorm until 11:30 or midnight after rehearsals. But I found near the end of first semester, I was thinking things along the lines of “Oh wow, the bookwork I did in class today really piqued my interest in dramaturgy,” or “Theatre can’t exist in a vacuum, right? What impact does this show have on its community when it is produced?” I wanted to explore these concepts, and then felt guilty that I might be taking away from my MT training by doing so–after all, there are only so many hours in a day! I can’t be in the dance studio stretching as well as in the library researching Theatre of the Oppressed, I’m not Hermione Granger! I felt really guilty and torn and wondered if I was in the right program. I even considered starting transfer applications for a BFA in Dramaturgy. But I knew I would miss my MT training so much if I went through with that.

I brought up my concerns and my feelings of guilt with the faculty, who were extraordinarily receptive, and are continuing to help me engineer the type of education I want, one where I have opportunities to explore a little bit of everything without “sacrificing” anything. I’m lucky at Viterbo that the different majors within the Department of Theatre and Music Theatre are encouraged to “play” with each other–there are very few classes that aren’t open to the entire department. I’m also lucky that my particular BFA in MT requires a large liberal arts core, so I feel less like I’m buckled in to one curriculum.

I don’t think I could have predicted any of these feelings emerging this time last year, when I was just getting ready to go off and study MT in college (even though I knew full well what I was getting into)! But as I progress further into my program and learn more about myself, flexibility becomes more and more important to me. I learned this year that I have a propensity for classical acting, and that’s certainly a skill I want to foster, especially because I will probably have to age into my type a little bit as a musical theatre performer. At Viterbo, I’m lucky enough to be able to explore that further. At some other programs, that may not be the case if the curriculum is very rigid.

I look at that fourteen year old girl who was precocious enough to sign up for CC with this username, and in some ways I don’t even recognize her. I think five years ago, I would have said “I’m going to be on Broadway someday or I’m going to die trying.” And that isn’t true anymore. I still love musical theatre–cut me open and I’ll bleed it!–but my goals and my definition of success have certainly changed since then. I want to do more than just MT, and curiously enough, it’s my musical theatre training that has shown me that.