Do you have to....?

Question

Do you have to be a musical theater major/minor in college to audition for the school production?? Does anyone have any suggestions for a good musical theater college?

Answer 1

No, you don't have to be a major.  In fact, for the bigger shows, the theatre department often supplements with people from outside.  I was in South Pacific with more music majors than theatre majors, and when we did Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, I was the music director and we had lots of non-theatre majors--including a geology major who played Feste the clown.

Now, if you want to study musical theatre as a major, you want a BFA program (bachelor of fine arts) not just a BA (bachelor of arts).  The best of those programs at at Julliard, Yale, Maryland, NYU.  Second-tier ones are University of Cincinnati, Wright State University, Indiana U., and a lot of the California universities.  And you can find really, really good ones at Cal Poly, Northern Kentucky U., Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, and many many others.

Don't concentrate only on musical theatre--learn straight drama too.  Show biz careers are tough, especially at the outset, and the more kinds of stuff you can do, the more chances you have of earning money.