I'm a Shenandoah MT graduate

maddogdolly
Sun, 30 Apr 2006 13:08:35 +0000

Hello all,

I was surfing around this site, looking for schools for my daughter, and also for one of my students, the latter of whom is seeking an M.T. school/career. I couldn’t help but smile at many of the previous posts regarding questions about SU and the Conservatory. I thought perhaps I would throw my info and background out there with the offer of answering anyone’s questions (to the best of my ability).

My big claim to fame as far as Shenandoah is concerned, is that I am the first graduate of their Musical Theatre program. Yep, I’m graduate No. 1. I attended the Conservatory from '73-'77 and it was in the fall of '75 that the MT program was set in place, and I switched from being a Music Ed major to MT. Hence, when I graduated in '77, I was the only MT graduate in my class! Now that you have no doubt calculated my age (eek!), let me brief you on what has transpired since then.

In the fall after graduation I moved to New York, worked in a few small theatres there (in forgettable shows), came back to D.C. area in '79 (my then-boyfriend was finishing at SU), started working the D.C. dinner theatre circuit and regional theatres in Md., Va. and Tennessee. Left the business for a few years in the early 80s (then-boyfriend had been upgraded to husband by this time).

In early '86 I was called by former mentor/professor and SSMT Artistic Director Hal Herman to come back to Shenandoah to star as “Dolly” in HELLO DOLLY for the Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre (then in it’s 3rd year). This was a role I had done in my junior year of college. Interestingly enough, I had my first baby in mid-April and went into rehearsals in mid-May and the show opened in early June. [ed. If anyone wants to talk about how to maintain a professional acting career and domestic life, I am the person to talk to!]

20 years, many many shows, and 3 kids-now-teens later, I am still a working actor, and still appear more or less regularly at SSMT as well as other theatres. Forgot to mention, I am blessed in that I live 30 minutes away from Shenandoah so I have maintained close contact with faculty and admin over the years. Not to mention when I go up to do SSMT, I meet and befriend a new batch of current students (and other guest artists like me who are brought in from NY).

In addition to my continued work as an actor, I am the founding Artistic Director of a youth theatre company, The Growing Stage, which I began in '93. I resigned from the company this year as I had begun teaching theatre at a small private highschool near where I live, and couldn’t maintain both positions. I still direct, teach, and as I have over the years, maintain a private studio in which I coach people on audition prep, voice and acting. I have co-written original musicals with a collaborator/friend (and fellow SU grad) and am currently guiding one of my high school students who is a gifted writer, as he develops a new musical.

Shenandoah is a top-notch school for Musical Theatre. I know all of the faculty and they have excellent credentials and I know first-hand the training MT students will receive. In the business, having SU on your resume is a postive flag to casting people. In other words, it definitely looks good on paper. You still have to sell your audition mind you…As for the actors who trained at SU who are now working on B’way (or have), they are my friends. We all came up together, more or less, and spent many summers at SSMT. I wanted my cake and eat it too (family life AND performing career) and they chose to pursue the career full-time. We do have to make choices don’t we…

I feel blessed to have come through SU’s MT program and to have been in on the ground floor. Many many changes over the years as you might expect. However, change is good.

Comparison to how it was ‘back in the day’ vs. now? Here’s the bottom line: In my day, the department was so small…even in my senior year, the freshmen class for MT was maybe 20 students. The biggest benefit was that we did ALL the shows, no question. And I was VERY fortunate to have played leading roles in the majority of them. Downside? Small faculty, lousy theatre (then we performed in Armstrong Auditorium which was really a concert hall, not a theatre). But the tradeoff was the experience I got from Hal Herman, SU’s founding theatre guru (now finishing his first year of retirement from teaching but still the A.D. of SSMT). Nowadays…current students have a larger faculty, wider selection of classes, and a new and fabulous theatre. They also have many more resources available to them then I did. The downside, unfortunately, is that freshmen, with rare exceptions, don’t get nearly as much performing opportunities as they used to. Why? Because the department is so big now and getting in has become more and more competitive over the years. You really have to be a triple threat these days. Or if you’re not, you’d better be a REALLY EXCEPTIONAL singer/actor.

In conclusion (sorry to ramble), I feel that my training at Shenandoah was invaluable. I chose that school because it was small and in a small town. Winchester, by the way, has come up a few notches since the old days. It is still small-town’ish for those of you in metropolitan cities, but it has it’s charm and plenty to do. Also, DC is only an hour away and the kids do go there from time to time. I have used my training non-stop in the almost 30-years since I graduated and it is only because I chose to raise a family that I too, am not working on Broadway, alongside so many friends. I don’t say that to gloat, merely to point out that we all got the same excellent training and I feel I am perhaps even more marketable now then I was then (this is the fate of character actors). Coincidentally, now that my youngest is almost 14, I am thinking of returning to full-time acting, by way of getting my MFA in Musical Theatre.

If anyone has any questions I would be happy to try and answer them, or steer you in the right direction. I consider myself fairly well “plugged in” at SU and am happy to help if I can. In related news, anyone in the area who is planning to attend an SSMT show (www.su.edu/ssmt) can catch me as “Maggie” in 42ND STREET, June 28-July 9.

Sorry to be insanely long-winded.

Cheers!
Dolly