<p>playbillvault dot com has the collection of playbills from all seasons…pretty cool resource for theatre folks!</p>
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<p>Thanks! Does this mean I should be able to get my D to part with the thousands she has stacked in her bedroom? ;-D</p>
<p>Does playbill vault include every actor who has been in the play or just the original cast? I don’t personally think that lists such as this are all that relevant to college admissions but even just for interest’s sake, replacements should be included, and sometimes replacements never make it into a hardcopy playbill.</p>
<p>Both MomCares and alwaysamom have important points to the insignificance of these listings. I’d like to add that it would be shameful if NYU didn’t have the most names listed as they have so many more theatre students per year vs CMU or any other BFA program. Percentage wise NYU would land much further down the list.</p>
<p>I find the high level of correlation between the various body counts on Broadway and National Tours and the reputation of the programs to be very interesting.</p>
<p>Agree with what alwaysamom wrote in #23. Not only would you have to count more than the original cast, but it is just this year’s season and it might be more relevant to look over a five or ten year period. I’m not sure the relevance to college admissions either as I’d be more interested in knowing if a percentage of graduates are working in theater, not just on Broadway. </p>
<p>I agree with amtc that NYU understandably has more because it is a larger program. </p>
<p>Also, given how competitive it is to be admitted to the so called “top programs” or most selective ones, it stands to reason that the graduates of those programs may fare well in the professional market and may not be entirely a product of their schooling as much as the talent base at such programs. </p>
<p>In any case, going back to the original question of “which college prepares you best for Broadway,” I have to say that my hope for what my kid gained at her college was not simply preparation for Broadway but preparation/training for professional work in theater and music, a learned mind, and personal growth. The goal of Broadway is a very very narrow one. Graduates of my D’s BFA program at NYU are working in many facets of the industry. The goal of the program is not “Broadway.” Nor was it my own kid’s goal, as neat as Broadway can be!</p>
<p>Oh, and I also agree with MomCares post #20…like her D, my D is not aiming to be in the dancing chorus and says she is not suited to it. While she grew up dancing, she says she’ll never be a chorus girl at 5’3" and considers herself more of a singer/actor. She never attends Equity Chorus Calls.</p>
<p>And yes, a number of recent graduates are in chorus, though we know plenty who have been cast in roles as well.</p>
<p>EmsDad – I would love to see your previous number crunching, but the link to it isn’t showing up on my computer…</p>
<p>I’m the one who posted the numbers on post #14, but don’t have the stats background to actually crunch the numbers… I did the counting simply because I found the question interesting that you posed in #25 above…</p>
<p>Personally, I found the count helpful. My daughter (also 5’3") is not going to be a dancer primarily, but she <em>could</em> have the grades/test scores for Northwestern or Yale… and she <em>might</em> have the voice for Julliard… schools we would not have had our list. It also helps us to ascertain just how strong a given school’s connections to Broadway really are. Anyone can hold a senior showcase, but if that’s all a school can offer, is it enough? (We do our version of a senior showcase at the film school where I teach, and I spend a lot of time telling my students to lower their expectations.)</p>
<p>Hope it was helpful to someone else (anyone else!) as well…</p>
<p>@mtandbassmom: here is my previous post from <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1116787-colleges-did-current-broadway-performers-attend.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1116787-colleges-did-current-broadway-performers-attend.html</a></p>
<p>Just for fun I went through 1,216 online bios for current adult actors cast in 48 Broadway, Off-Broadway and National Tour musicals and tabulated what schools they attended (this is a large majority of the musicals and tours listed on Broadway.com that are currently running and the shows are listed at the bottom of this post). A total of 466 actors listed their schools. The list is shown below, after a bunch of caveats.</p>
<p>Some up-front caveats:</p>
<p>(1) These sorts of lists are by nature very temporal - roles come and go, actors rotate in and out of productions, and with such small numbers (5 or less for most schools) position in the list (beyond the top 10 or so) could change radically with only small changes in employment.</p>
<p>(2) The list is clearly biased in that it consists of only those actors who list their school in their online bio. Hence, some schools may just be better at getting their grads to list their alma mater. </p>
<p>(3) Obviously, schools with large class sizes would potentially have an advantage over schools with much smaller class sizes in accumulating large counts of working actors. </p>
<p>(4) Not all graduates of the various schools majored in musical theatre or theatre - some majored in dance, vocal music, non-fine arts, etc.</p>
<p>(5) There are many specialized, non-traditional types of roles in musicals (ballet dancers, opera singers, acrobats, etc.) that could potentially skew the data and this quick-and-dirty survey did not account for any of that differentiation.</p>
<p>(6) Of course, EVERY school has more working graduates than the numbers on the list – the survey ONLY COVERS CURRENT, ONLINE BIOS. Some actors who are in rehearsals for new shows are currently “offline” and not included in the survey (see caveats 1 and 2).</p>
<p>(7) I may have made some errors; you tend to get cross-eyed looking at 1,216 bios.</p>
<p>There are, of course, many other potential points of contention with regard to this data. On the other hand, the data does include a pretty significant number of actors (466) in terms of Broadway employment (it is a really small industry). </p>
<p>Personally, I would not put a whole lot of stock in evaluating schools according to the data in this list. However, many schools make mention of Broadway actors on their web pages, hence, grads with Broadway employment must have some significance. Looking at the data, it does seem pretty obvious to me that some schools are clearly at the top in terms of producing Broadway and National Tour actors, and the schools at the very top are the “usual suspects” in terms of reputation. This, of course, begs the chicken-and-egg question, “how much credit can be attributed to training at top schools since they get their pick of the most talented kids to begin with?”</p>
<p>All-in-all, it is kind of fun to look at. I was surprised by some of the results:</p>
<p>NYU 40
Michigan 25
Boco 23
CCM 19
CMU 18
Florida State 16
AMDA 13
Northwestern 13
OCU 13
Julliard 11
Penn State 10
Syracuse 10
U Arts 9
Ailey (see note 1) 8
Elon 8
UC Irvine 8
Yale 8
Point Park 7
Hartt 6
Northern Colorado (see note 2) 6
Oklahoma 6
USC 6
Catholic University 5
Fordham (see note 1) 5
Shenandoah 5
SUNY Buffalo 5
SUNY Purchase 5
UNCSA 5
Baldwin-Wallace 4
CSU Fullerton 4
Emerson 4
Marymount Manhattan 4
New School 4
Wagner 4
BYU 3
Harvard 3
Ithaca 3
James Madison 3
New World School of the Arts 3
Northern Kentucky 3
NYU Steinhardt 3
Otterbein 3
Webster 3
Wright State 3
Abilene Christian 2
Ball State 2
Boston U 2
Brandeis 2
Chapman 2
Clark Atlanta 2
Hofstra 2
Illinois Wesleyan 2
LSU 2
Michigan State 2
Muhlenburg 2
Oberlin 2
Pace 2
Roosevelt 2
Rutgers 2
Sheridan (CA) 2
SUNY Fredonia 2
Temple 2
Texas State 2
Wichita State 2
Arizona 1
Austin College 1
Belmont 1
Bird 1
Brooklyn College 1
Cal Arts 1
CAP 21 1
Catawba 1
Central Michigan 1
Circle in the Square 1
Columbia College 1
CSU ? 1
CSU Long Beach 1
Duke 1
East Carolina 1
Evansville 1
Five Towns 1
Hampton 1
Illinois 1
Indiana 1
Kent State 1
Lawrence 1
Long Island University 1
Los Angeles Theatre Academy 1
Miami 1
Miami Ohio 1
Mississippi 1
Morehouse 1
Mount Holyoke 1
MSU 1
Northern Illinois 1
Notre Dame de Namur 1
Ohio State 1
Princeton 1
Rice 1
Rider 1
Rollins 1
Sam Houston 1
San Jose State 1
Seattle Pacific 1
Smith 1
Spellman 1
Stanford 1
Stephens 1
SUNY Courtland 1
U Denver 1
U Houston 1
U Maine 1
U Maryland 1
U Wisconsin Eau-Claire 1
UCF 1
UCLA 1
UNC Chapel Hill 1
University of New Orleans 1
USF 1
Vanderbilt 1
Western Kentucky 1
Western Michigan 1
Wilberforce 1</p>
<p>Note 1: Ailey/Fordham grads are counted as “Ailey”</p>
<p>Note 2: The two actors who listed “UNC” as their school were counted as Northern Colorado, but they could have meant other schools (U of North Carolina, etc.).</p>
<p>Note 3: Child actors were excluded from the overall count</p>
<p>Note 4: European schools were excluded from the list (there was only a handful listed in the bios).</p>
<p>Note 5: If an actor listed more than one school, all schools were counted in the list</p>
<p>Broadway and Off-Broadway Shows reviewed: Anything Goes, Jersey Boys, Book of Mormon, Memphis, Wicked, Chicago, Lion King, Sister Act, Mary Poppins, Rock of Ages, Priscilla, On a Clear Day, Phantom, How to Succeed, Mamma Mia, Porgy and Bess, Rent, Million Dollar Quartet, Follies, Avenue Q, Silence, Sistas, Fantasticks, Berenstein Bears, Newsical [25 total].</p>
<p>National Tours Reviewed: Addams Family, American Idiot, Beauty and the Beast, Billy Elliott, Fela, Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, In the Heights, Jersey Boys 1, Jersey Boys 2, La Cage Aux Folles, Les Mis, Lion King, Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, Spamalot, Peter Pan, Shrek, South Pacific, West Side Story, Young Frankenstein [23 total].</p>
<p>Some shows were omitted due to difficulty obtaining online bios (for example, click-through bios would not work for Spiderman in my browser and Voca People has tongue-in-cheek bios). Some shows were omitted because they are dance-only or highly specialized shows (Riverdance, Stomp, etc.).</p>
<p>I strongly encourage all students and parents reading here to look at NOT just the lists above (school names and numbers) but to read ALL of what has been said in this thread. Soozie, mtdog, Emsdad and others all give great explanations of all of the MANY factors that make these lists so complex - aka these people weren’t all MT majors from the schools (in fact MANY were not), most professionals define success as working ACROSS genres (film, TV, straight plays, musicals), etc. I encourage this b/c I see so many students fixated on “these schools get me into a Bway musical” and there is always so much more to the story (as they say in that pretty song cut from Shrek 
)</p>
<p>CoachC wrote:
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<p>I could not agree more!! In my line of work as well, and even reading this forum, I see lots of prospective MT college students with “I want to be on Broadway” as the goal. Now, of course, Broadway is a bit of the epitome of theater in many ways. But that goal is soooooooo narrowly defined, not to mention that very very few people will ever be on Broadway. So, if your goal in going to a college MT program is to be on Broadway, there is a very very very good chance that you will never reach the goal. </p>
<p>I do believe in dreaming big and setting high expectations but Broadway isn’t that realistic and if that is all you want in terms of thinking ahead to a career, you may likely end up sorely disappointed. It is my belief that a true actor/singer who has a passion for performing, will be happy with success in any facet of the professional theater/music world. I know my own kid who is a graduate of a college MT program, as well as myself, define success much differently than Broadway. To be a working actor, singer, or dancer and immersed in one’s field and being paid for it after graduation is a huge success in itself and is not even easily attainable (but more doable than Broadway). And if you love it that much, you will be happy with that success as you’ll be doing what you love and making a living at it! Is becoming an actor/singer/dancer just about Broadway or about DOING it? I think the latter. Success can be had in so many venues and aspects of theater and music. I think if you go into college thinking in these terms, your chance of success is a decent one. If you only have your sights set on Broadway, you may never achieve what you want. </p>
<p>I’m happy for my kid because in the three years since she graduated college at age 20, she has been working steadily and only in the fields of music and theater in many different aspects, all professional in nature, and in NYC, and has earned her living doing so. I don’t know what the future holds but so far she is “doin’ it” which is doing what she loves and so I see that as successful. She has not been on Broadway but has not focused on that, nor auditioned much for it at all. She does have peers/classmates who have been on Broadway since graduating, however, and so it is possible of course! But even those who have been on Broadway, it is not a PERMANENT job! Better be happy performing and doing theater, music, etc. in other places too!</p>
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<p>This reality can’t be overstated. D has several friends who “made it” to Broadway while quite young, only to have their shows close in a matter of months. They all subsequently returned to whatever they were doing pre-Broadway.</p>
<p>Our regional theatre scene is heavily populated with people who were once on Broadway.</p>
<p>Even Matthew Broderick said in the Playbill for Nice Work that he hadn’t had many Broadway offers since The Producers. </p>
<p>A Broadway show is, like virtually ALL MT work, a temporary job.</p>
<p>^^Oh my gosh, yes!!! Broadway is just one place to perform and for almost everyone, just one thing on their resume. It is not a permanent job. It is always “on the the next job.” Everyone I know with Broadway credits also has a huge string of regional, national tours, contract jobs, concerts, workshops, “dead people on Law and Order: SVU”, etc. I tell my kids that the point is to put food on the table - some jobs you will love, others are just a paycheck. Any kid who thinks that they are going to graduate and immediately and forever be “on Broadway” needs a reality check! (Btw, my D’s favorite credit is as a “Radio Disney dancer” which is hilarious because…its radio!!! She was actually paid to dance hip hop at promotional events!)</p>
<p>In football the average career expectancy is 3 years. I’ll bet you the average career expectancy of a Broadway performer is probably 26 weeks. And that is over one’s LIFE EXPECTANCY!!!</p>
<p>Maybe the question we should be asking is which colleges have the highest number of students employed in the performing arts after 10 years? Wonder if there’s any way to quantitate that.</p>
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<p>I don’t know if you could quantify that, jeffandann, but to me, THAT is the question, not how many have been on Broadway.</p>
<p>I also forgot to mention that D’s MT program (and many other top programs) includes plenty of students and teachers with Broadway credits. As everyone here has said, Broadway is NOT the end… only another potential job on the list.</p>
<p>Another thing to add is that while Broadway jobs are not permanent, neither are a LOT of performing arts work and thus those in this field are always job hunting as one thing ends, etc. I know my kid always is doing that.</p>
<p>@soozievt - I only hope that someday our D will be a successful at the endless job hunt as yours has been so far!! ;-D</p>
<p>You are kind, MomCares. While auditioning can be neverending, the jobs my D has held in the recent past and the coming year have pretty much fallen in her lap. They sought her and she had not “applied.” I think over time, in this field, one establishes networks and one thing leads to another and she’ll be contacted about this or that opportunity. So far, so good. But she does work very hard. And there are always endings to all these performing arts jobs and so it involves new starts all the time.</p>