Last year, Playbill launched its new function series, how did I come here, not just actors, but directors, designers, musicians and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is direct theater.
Since then, more than 70 artists have shared their travels to Broadway, including the many conservation area, colleges and postgraduate schools that were of great importance for their ultimate success.
Below, as part of Playbill’s coverage for back to school week, we have compiled 25 answers from the theater staff to the question: “Where did you train/study?” Read their answers and click here For the full range of interviews.
Stage manager Christopher Kee Anaya Gorman
I received my BFA in stage management from the University of Arizona (Go Wildcats!). It was an excellent program to learn inside, and it was clearer when I met younger stage managers coming out of school and discussing their programs. At the u of A, I worked with MFA students as an undergraduate degree at main stage productions with complete performance schedules, understudy rehearsals, automation, fly track, traps, etc., all in conjunction with our coursework.
Director and actor Michael Arden
I attended the Interlochen Arts Camp and Academy and the Juilliard School of Drama.
Actor Roman banks
I consider my education continuously, but I have officially trained for a year at Shenandoah Conservatory as a major in musical theater! However, high school programs such as Youngarts and the Georgia Governor’s Honors program have taught me important lessons about ethics and my crafts that I still use today.
Costume designer Gregg Barnes
I have my BFA in English literature of San Diego State University and an MFA in design of the University of New York.
Music director and conductor Christian blood gear
When I was four years old, I started taking piano lessons. I took piano lessons, violin lessons (violin lessons didn’t last long, as I was terrible), playing voice lessons and French horn. Eventually I studied at Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music with a degree in piano performance and attended the graduate school at CCM in Opera and accompanied. I had a graduate assistantship in the opera section and had the wonderful opportunity to work in most Voice Studios and the opera studio.
Vocal, text and dialect coach Buffington teeth
I have trained with Robert Neff Williams In his two-year voice, speech and Shakespeare program after two years with Maggie Flanigan in William Esper Studio. A decade later, I received my master’s degree at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in Training Actors (Voice), followed by a postgraduate award from the University of Warwick in the teaching of Shakespeare to actors and artists.
Actor Jonathan Burke
I started my education as an actor head of the Baltimore School for the Arts for High School and trained with the arena players [Youtheater] while matriculating through High School. I then received my BFA in Musical Theater from Ithaca College.
Lighting designer Isabella byrd
I was fortunate that I had early exposure to the growing up art, which led me to a public Houston school, HSPVA (High School for Executive and Visual Arts). I dive deep into the theater as I also dance at the Houston Ballet Academy. It gave me the confidence to apply for the Conservatory College – where I chose CCM, University of Cincinnati – Beliefs Design. It was great to work at school within so many performance styles – theater, musical theater, opera and dance.
I didn’t go to the grade school, but instead joked that I went to the School of Hard Knocks: New York City! This incredible city is fundamental to the artist I strive to become.
Actor Nick Cearley
I grew up in Fairfield, Ohio, just outside the Cincinnati/Dayton area and went to Fairfield High School. I went to Boston Conservatory and got my BFA in musical theater.
Set and costume designer Bunny Christie
I went to the Central School of Art, where I did a foundation course and then a theater design.
Actor Jordan Dobson
Temple University’s musical theater program in Philadelphia. But every show I do is like an extra training, so I still study!
Actor Hawley Gould
I did so much theater as a child. It was really those school performances and theaters in the community who promoted my love for achievement, long before I ever imagined it to be my literal work. I will never forget how Paula Dawson and Ally of through me threw in the seventh class as a Wickersham brother and made me dance during the corridors during “Ah, the think you can think!” It has changed my life course forever. More ‘seriously’, I received my BFA from the Nyu Tisch School of the Arts, training in the new studio on Broadway.
Actor Dorian Harewood
I study at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, training with the Great Mezzo Soprano, Lucile V. Evans.
Actor Judy Kaye
I studied theater and voice at UCLA. I was part of a course called the play specialization. It was something of a conservatory in the major of the theater. We studied voice and dictionary, stage movement, mask and mimicry, Shakespeare scene study and acting. I was also a member of the Opera Workshop and The Musical Comedy Workshop.
Actor Telly entrance
I study at Carnegie Mellon University’s drama.
Musical director, conductor and Arranger John McDaniel
I went to Carnegie Mellon University as an actor, and I have a degree in drama.
Actor Jessie Mueller
I started voting lessons in high school and then went to the University of Syracuse and studied in their musical theater and acting programs.
Director Jack O’Brien
Like Catherine Sloper in Say The Heir“I was taught by Masters.” I was an English major at the University of Michigan, clueless about my future when I dropped under the game of the Ellis Rabb‘s wonderful APA repertory Company, which was at the university. I chased, chased, chopped and entertained until Ellis finally offered me to be his assistant during the New York season. For the next five or six years I made notes for him, John Houseman, Eva le Gallienne, Alan Schneiderand Stephen Porter – teach the styles, the insights, the attack of these virtual giants, as the only assistant who could afford the small business. It has changed my life.
Stage manager Danielle there will
I was mostly taught myself. I started as acting major at Alexander Dreyfoos School of the Arts. We worked on a class project in my theater history class, and our group needs someone to act as stage manager, so I was voluntary. I didn’t have much knowledge of what a stage manager did … I knew they mentioned clues for lighting, sound, etc. And wrote it down blocking.
After that, I did not review the stage management until I was at university. My second year when I went to USitt [United States Institute for Theatre Technology]. To help pay for the conference, I worked in the computer lab for a few hours a day. On a break, I walked through an exhibition floor and saw a hockey caught my eye for the New Jersey Shakespeare Theater. I interviewed a summer internship and later found out that I was getting in! I told myself that if I could survive the twelve weeks and still enjoy it, I know that the stage management is what I wanted to do. Since my college was a BA program and (then) offered no SM -specific classes, I did a lot until I made it. I spent all my free time looking at different types of paperwork and recreating it. I attribute a lot of my early SM education to this summer program.
Video and Projection – Designer Finn Ross
Central School of Speech and Drama, London. My degree was in alternative theater – 24 years later, I’m still not sure what it means, but it gave me a lot of room to experiment and find my way to video.
Actor Jennifer Simard
I trained at the Boston Conservatory – honestly, watched and done and gained experience.
Costume designer Paul Tazewell
Undergraduate: Pratt Institute and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Postgraduate: New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Actor Kara Young
New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, Labyrinth Theater Company, all over New York, and is still studying.
Costume designer Paloma Young
BA in the American history of UC Berkeley, MFA in costume and sound design of UC San Diego.
Set and costume designer David zinn
This is a long answer to a simple question but I feel like I really Began my study while I was in high school (in the northwest of the Pacific) and my local community theater, as well as some of the theaters in Seattle, gave me a place and community to start studying and learning what theater design was about. But more formally, I immediately came to the NYU immediately to the high school in 1987. When they had a (since then discontinued) program, where you could be enrolled as a undergraduate program at the Graduate Design program, which is why I did it, and didn’t really know exactly what I was tackling myself for. It was very difficult, but I was surrounded by a pile of people who kept inspiring me: Marsha Ginsberg, Paul Tazewell, Christine Jones, Constance Hoffman. Gregg Barnes and Kitty Leech were in the bottom of the undergraduate costume store, Moses Kaufman directed at etw [Experimental Theatre Wing]. It was a cool time to be there.
