Gender In Musical Theatre

snapdragonfly
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:11:48 +0000

Wow. MTguyMom - what on earth did their list look like?

My D has raw talent and charm and smarts and all that stuff like everyone else but she decided to quit pretending she was going to do something else kinda late in the game and her vocals were NOT competitive. (Yet. wink.) She got great coaching, figured out what she needed to do and worked her butt off to improve and she did improve but we know that as far as vocals, she’s definitely in the “yes it’s there, but it’s not all there yet” category, and that getting into the lottery/dream schools would be a real long shot for her.

As it ends up she did not get into any of the lottery/dream schools - though we only tried for a handful of those anyway, though I think doing 25 of them wouldn’t have yielded any better results and would have broke us and taken away from applying to more likely schools.

She had two state schools with auditions but not terribly competitive, and several non auditioned BA programs at schools that were private but known to be relatively generous with aid, and now we have acceptances at two schools we know we could afford and one that we can with a stretch. There are about 4 or 5 schools that had we gone there, would probably be on that list, too. No, we are not going to be in that bunch whose list has all the names because realistically, we knew that we couldn’t afford to try for all of those (distance mattered as well) and seeing how “there” already so many of the girl’s voices are, we just knew that it was more important to go where we thought she would fit.

What matters is that she will, one, love her school and get an education, and two, get trained and mentored and supported her last year in her search for contacts, and I believe she will get that where she ends up. She’ll just have to be the person who puts her school on the map. ;-)

My heart just breaks for your friends who did not get acceptances. OH that would be hard. Did they not have any good safeties on their lists?

As far as talking to them - I have found that the universally appropriate way to talk to anybody about anything painful is to just LISTEN to them and acknowledge their feelings with empathy. If you feel you have some advice of any value to offer you might ask if they would like you to help them figure out what to do next but don’t be a big pushy rescuer - just let them know you are available to help figure out what to do next if they want, and that they aren’t the only amazingly talented kid who shockingly ended up with nothing. That doesn’t help them but it’s of some comfort to know they aren’t the only person in the world who apparently did it all WRONG while everyone else happily sails off to Special U. On the contrary - it’s a lottery. Their numbers just didn’t come up and it sucks, and it’s an obstacle, but one that can be overcome and in the long run they’ll certainly learn something from it. Those sound like platitudes but they sound that way because they do happen to be true. (just don’t be glib and all cheery when you say it; personally, glib and cheery makes me want to hit someone when I’m down. Gentle and soothing but pragmatic is what I need; try to help me find the hidden opportunity but can the Mary Sunshine crap. haha. Though you sound sensitive enough to realize this already.)