Broadway Baby

This chapter discusses Tommy Tune’s dance and theater training in his native Texas and his early career in New York, where he immediately found work as a dancer. He appeared in the ensemble of three Broadway shows while also traveling out of town to dance and choreograph on the thriving summer stock circuit. He learned to work fast and efficiently, in every style of musical theater dance. Roles in movies and television convinced Tune that singing and dancing in front of live audiences suited him better than performing for a camera. His friend and early mentor, Michael Bennett, provided Tune with both his first opportunity to choreograph on Broadway and his breakthrough as a performer. Originally hired to choreograph two numbers for the struggling musical Seesaw, Tune was also promoted by Bennett to a featured role in the show as a gay choreographer. It was one of musical theater’s first attempts to portray gays as more than stereotypes. Tune’s showstopping Seesaw number, “It’s Not Where You Start,” which he also choreographed, served as a template for much of his later work. It drew on early show business performing styles and tropes and infused them with contemporary energy and attitude. In both his staging and performance, Tune blended the old and the new into something fresh and original.

Managing Theater Training to Increase Children Creativity (Case Study in Learning Community at Tanah Ombak)

This study aims to determine how the planning, implementation, evaluation of managing theater training to increase children's creativity in the learning community of Tanah Ombak Padang. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. data collection to collect the required data, including the method of participatory observation, interviews, and documentation. qualitative analysis through stages in accordance with predetermined procedures, namely data collection, data reduction, data presentation/presentation, and verification/drawing conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the creativity of learning residents grows and develops through theater training using 3 aspects, namely: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The process of planning, implementing and evaluating learning community theater training can foster creativity, recognize potential and insight, mental attitudes and children's character Keywords: children creativity, theater training, learning community.

Building the Broadway Voice

This chapter investigates how differing pressures on the Broadway musical theater industry can contribute to certain vocal stylistic choices. The author considers the ways in which collegiate and professional training programs have responded to these needs through their musical theater curricula. The chapter brings into relief how vocal training in such programs ensures a sonic conformity, which presumably improves the marketability of the performer in an industry demanding predictable sounds. Specifically, it considers the pedagogical philosophies prevalent in Midwestern musical theater training programs where the author has worked as a vocal coach and where many Broadway performers cut their teeth. The chapter takes no position for or against the vocal ideas taught in these or other musical theater training programs, but makes some observations for the unique demands attached to such training and what demands those pressures make on singers today. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that the growth of the Broadway musical as a tourist attraction, the rise of the megamusical, and the formation of this Broadway sound are all interrelated phenomena enabled by a new corporatizing ideology in musical theater that has disciplined the body of the Broadway performer for decades and continues to shape the industry’s sound today.