What is the Professional Track?
This program is offered to select students who have demonstrated, through ongoing study with us, the potential to consider a career in the performing arts. Though we know that students’ dreams may change, the discipline and creative thinking required for this kind of study will serve them on any path they may one day choose to follow.
NEW for fall 2016, twice a month, ATS’ Professional Track will merge with our Opera Workshop program, to extend its advanced musical studies to Opera Workshop students as well, and to give Pro Track students the opportunity to explore a wider world of music/theater performance.
Curriculum
In addition to the students’ private studio lessons in acting and singing, Act Too Studio’s Professional Track includes 2 hours of classroom study each week, on Sunday afternoons, with classes rotating over the course of a month. Classes are added or changed as the program progresses. At various times, our curriculum has included:
Approaching the Script: Scenes, One-Acts, & Short Plays – In these sessions, students learn techniques for approaching scripted materials. This is followed by preparing monologues and short to moderate length scenes, eventually moving on to one act and short plays. Classroom performances and critiques take place on a regular basis.
Music Theory & Ensemble Singing – Based on student need and multiple requests, we’ve combined basic music theory (new for some, review for others) with the study of ensemble pieces from both musical theater and classical repertoire, so that students can begin to immediately apply what they’ve learned about theory to practical ensemble singing. This area of study is invaluable for any student hoping to succeed in professional musical theater.
Expressive Singing – Heavily inspired by Dalcroze Eurhythmics methodology, this course uses movement, improvisation, and rhythmic dictation as tools with which to explore the core elements of musicality—pitch, dynamics, and rhythm—and their relationship to emotional intent.
Voice Class – Experience has taught us that students can learn as much from watching each other as they can from their own private study. This monthly performance class provides Professional Track students the opportunity to share prepared studio and audition pieces with each other for guided group discussion and critique.
Musical Theater Literature & Repertoire – In this hands-on course, students are introduced to the rich history and vast repertoire of the American musical theater tradition by way of both archival recordings and their own study and performance. While this may appear on the surface to be an academic exercise, it is actually entirely practical. Even as commercial theater trends towards contemporary movie adaptations & jukebox musicals, regional and stock theater—the bread and butter of all young professionals—still churns out the classics, year after year.
Our students will acquire an understanding of the cultural context and common tropes of every era of musical theater, so that they may perform these works in a way that is dynamic, intelligent, and stylistically sound.
Guest Workshop – On a regular basis, Professional Track students have the opportunity to work with a performing arts professional outside the Act Too Studio core staff. Guest workshops include ongoing study with our regular guest artists as well as master classes with one-time special guests. Unlike our larger summer workshops, these sessions are offered to Professional Track students only.
Cost
Beginning in fall of 2016, Professional Track students pay $10 for each class they attend.
Enrollment in Act Too Studio’s Professional Track is by invitation only. Please feel free to contact us for more information.
What Pro Track students and their parents are saying: |
The quality, expertise, and mentorship from Melinda, Jan, and Bob at Act Too Studio is utterly phenomenal. I have seen my son grow exponentially in his skills and abilities under their tutelage, and his passion for the performing arts is fueled and fed through his studies here. There are so many reasons why Act Too is an essential part of my son’s life, and all of them are setting him on his desired path with a sense of professionalism, versatility, talent, knowledge, and an arrow to success in the field of performing arts. We even tailored our home purchase to be geographically closer! 🙂 In gratitude, Mrs. Wilson Ananda Wilson Pro-Track has been a fun, interesting, complex, and incredibly worthwhile experience for me. I learn so much every week and so much more than just the basics of acting and singing. Classes like music theory, musical theater history and shakespeare analysis have given me such a well rounded theater and musical theater education. I also enjoy being with peers who are as serious as me and collaborating with them. All in all I would totally recommend this program for anyone interested in serious skill building yet enjoyable training. Brandon Dallmann |
If you are a Pro Track student or parent, let us know what you think of the program!
(Responses may be quoted on this page for the world to see!)
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