Current Musical Theatre Junior!

UCFstudent1
Thu, 16 Jan 2014 21:10:27 +0000

I did not like my experience in the Musical Theatre program at UCF. They call it a conservatory and it just makes me laugh. You can not call this program anything close to a conservatory when 9 out of 10 students leave the program because of their dissatisfaction with the program rather than being forced to leave because of lack of effort.

Yes the teachers are nice, if you are one of their favorites. The favorites are not the ones that do their homework and do well in their classes either. Sometimes this can just happen naturally but most of the time it requires a lot of a** kissing. I personally did not feel as though I had to suck up to my teacher when I was paying them. There is also a lot of negativity and drugs within the whole theatre program. And you can tell who has been hitting the bong a little to hard in voice class.

The teachers hardly ever compliment you. I understand they treat you like how you are going to be treated in the real World, but if you get up there and sing a song great and another person gets up and absolutely murders a song, they will say the exact same things to you. It really gives you a warm fuzzy felling inside!

You also have to audition and take any part that is offered for you every semester. Most students can not get a job because they have a huge time commitment for a understudy ensemble role. There have even been times where a understudy gets to go in because they main actor can not for fill the role, and they they take the role from the understudy who has been practicing the role the whole semester, and just give the part to a upperclassmen. Favorites and seniority are a huge headache at theatre UCF as a whole.

I can go into more detail about the teachers if you ask. But I am just putting it out there that most of the theatre teachers (performing and non performing) are horrible with grades. Three of my four theatre grades were wrong first semester. I had to email and meet with the teachers to show them their mistakes. Very unprofessional. The only time the teachers will be nice to you and tell you semi useful information is in the BFA review.Of course that only happens once a semester and is approximately 10 minutes long so soak it up while you can!

If you go into the program as a BA, don’t worry if you audition enough times they will let you in to BFA. This shows how high their standards are as a program. I think they just do it because they have so many people leaving the program that they need to keep the classes from being totally empty.

All in all this program really turned me off from theatre. They try to act like they see your individual acting styles but quite frankly they just want to make everybody into a leading man and a leading lady. This can be good, but not when it is not what you want to focus your career around. The acting teachers were the worst in my experience.