Career Prep for the Arts, Part 2

 

[In “What Are We Training For?” his “Editor’s Note” to American Theatre’s 2026 annual training issue, editor-in-chief Rob Weinert-Kendt introduced the month’s topic by asserting:

Those who seek counsel from veterans or experts on whether to pursue a degree, or some other course of study, instinctively know that they want to continue growing as an artist.  From there, of course, it’s not so much a question of to train or not to train; it’s down to choosing which program or apprenticeship or entry-level job to apply for.  This decision point is especially acute in the performing arts, given both the painful contraction of the theatre industry—an implosion that has correspondingly spread to jobs in academia—and the metastasizing cost of higher education.  Surely some kind of training is essential to any skill, but when the marketplace for your skills is shrinking, what exactly are you training for, and at what cost?

In this, our annual training issue, we examine this quandary from a variety of angles.

[In the second installment of “Career Prep for the Arts,” I’ll be presenting on Rick On Theater two more articles on the subject of educating future professional theater artists, both by Allison Consadine, who writes the newsletter AT Education Monthly for the Theatre Communications Group, the organization that promotes professional non-profit theater in the United States and publishes American Theatre magazine.

[Part 1 of “Career Prep for the Arts” was posted on Thursday. 2 April; I urge ROTters to read it if you haven’t already.  (The first post in the series contains identifications and explanations that pertain to later articles, but which I haven’t repeated.)]

 

“GRAD EXPECTATIONS”
by Allison Considine

[The first of two articles by Allison Considine in Rick On Theater’s series “Career Prep for the Arts” are both by the same writer.  One’s from American Theatre’s annual training issue, “Learning Curves” (Winter 2026 – volume 42, number 3), and the second’s from TCG’s AT Education Monthly, the dedicated monthly column and newsletter published by American Theatre that focuses on theater education, training, and the next generation of theater professionals.  “Grad Expectations,” below, was originally posted online on 16 February 2026.]

Theatre students from the class of 2024 tell us how they’re faring in a changing market.

When I graduated with an acting degree in 2014 [she graduated from Pace University in New York City with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater and English], I felt like a rudderless boat. Soon after, I took part in a two-week post-grad boot camp called SpringboardNYC, run by the American Theatre Wing [the organization “dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre” that created and sponsors the Tony Awards]. Designed to help recent theatre grads transition into careers in New York City, the program offered a simple mantra: Stay warm, dry, and fed. This was the foundation of success before diving into creative work, and it took me several months to get there. 

I couch-surfed at friends’ apartments, and for a month I shared a bunk bed with my toddler cousins in Brooklyn before finally landing a lease. I juggled multiple jobs: stocking shelves at a retail store at the crack of dawn, then running across Manhattan to clock in as a hostess at a restaurant for dinner service—with, most days, a nannying gig squeezed in.

Auditions were rare, but I stayed connected to the theatre community in other ways. On the occasional free night, I’d catch a show, and I started a blog to write about the work I was seeing. According to my tax return, I made a whopping $18,000 that year [from a base year of 2014, that’s worth $24,800 in 2026].

Thankfully, 11 months after turning my graduation tassel, I landed a job at American Theatre magazine and things finally clicked into place for me. A decade later, I’m especially moved to speak with young people entering the field now, many of whom began their college careers in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and all of whom graduated in 2024. They’ve since faced headwinds that would have capsized my rudderless boat. Their experiences, shared below, speak for themselves.

Tailoring a Career

Q Le just returned to dry land after a Virgin Voyages cruise through the Mediterranean, where he worked on costumes for the immersive show Persephone [created by Holly-Anne Devlin and Kaleidoscope Immersive, it is a blend of acrobatics, live singing, and dynamic dance with a pop/rock influence]. You might say the Pace University costume design graduate has been sailing smoothly since earning his degree, with consistent work and little downtime. 

After graduation, his first job was a production of Anything Goes [Cole Porter, 1934] at the Muny [common appellation of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre; 19-25 August 2024] in St. Louis, assisting costume designer Tristan Raines, his former professor. Le took the design notes, ran costume fittings, coordinated shopping runs, and pulled additional pieces from the theatre’s costume stock.

“They call it Broadway summer camp,” said Le. “It’s all of these people who are at the top of their craft in all worlds—design, directing, choreography—and the performers are just so incredible, so dedicated. It’s a unique experience to put up shows of that size in two weeks.”

After the Muny, Le returned home to Santa Barbara, California, to do the costumes for Grease at Stage Left Productions [Santa Barbara; 20 and 21 July 2024], where he had done theatre as a kid, and where he’s returned for the past seven summers to design the costumes. Le’s last summer looked a lot like the previous year’s, with a return to the Muny for Bring It On [Tom Kitt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeff Whitty and Amanda Green; 16-22 June 2025] and to Stage Left Productions for The Addams Family [26 and 27 July 2025].

[Stage Left Productions in Santa Barbara (there’s an unrelated outfit with the same name in Arizona) is an itinerant performing arts youth theater organization and summer camp. It specializes in intensive training for kids and teens (typically ages 4-17) in musical theater, covering acting, singing, dancing, and technical theater. Because Stage Left doesn’t have a permanent theater space of its own, it often rent local school facilities for their performances. These Stage Left productions are distinguished the high schools’ own theater programs.]

Between this bookend of summer gigs, Le was brought back to New York to work on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonightmares, a haunted house at Rockefeller Center [20 September-31 October 2024], where he met a dresser who connected him with a job working on costumes for Jennifer Hudson’s backup dancers at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade [28 November 2024].

“So much of the reason that I’ve gotten to do some of the coolest things in my entire life is because someone said, ‘Are you free to go on a cruise ship?’ Yes, I am. ‘Are you free to wake up at 1 a.m. and go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade and sew for 40 dancers in the pouring rain?’ Yes, I am.”

His primary connections have come through Raines, but Le has also found work through fellow classmates and connections in fashion and live entertainment. He works tailoring gigs for electronic dance music artists, and he recently did the costumes for Conan Gray’s band and backup dancers for the MTV Video Music Awards [7 September 2025].

Between gigs, Le teaches on weekends at the New York Sewing Center, where he can pick up extra shifts if design work is slow. “Every survival gig or money gig that I do, it’s really sewing and art-centered,” he said. “I feel very lucky to be able to say that.”

Starting last January, Le worked on the Nevada Ballet Theatre’s [Las Vegas] The Nutcracker [December 2026; exact dates to be announced] with a team of designers he’d worked with in New York, including Ricky Lurie and his former professor Jess Gersz. This team brought him on to work on other exciting projects, including Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) at the American Repertory Theater [Cambridge, Mass.; Jim Barne and Kit Buchan; 20 May-13 July 2025], the Oh, Mary! transfer to Broadway [Cole Escola; transferred to Broadway, 11 July 2024] and ongoing cast changeovers, and Waiting for Godot on Broadway [Samuel Beckett; starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter; 28 September 2025-4 January 2026].

He also worked on Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors with Raines at [New York City’s] New World Stages [Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen; 4 September 2023-7 January 2024]. When the producers asked the design team to build out a rental package, Raines passed the reins to Le. “It was the first time that I was just handed a bible of costumes and was told, ‘You’re in charge. Here’s all the money. Buy it and make it.’ It was pretty intimidating, but it was very rewarding.”

In this whirlwind year, Le spent a few months back in Santa Barbara, but recently moved into a new apartment in New York City with classmates.

“I feel a lot more secure now that I live with some of my best friends,” he said. “So I feel like I’m here for the foreseeable future, until I start considering grad school.”

For Le, who is still deciding whether to pursue a career as a designer or continue along the associate route, one goal is clear: “I really have always wanted to end up being a teacher. I love working with kids at the summer camp, and it’s so rewarding to help them on their journey through the arts and theatre—it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

Road Rules

Julia Schick, a 2024 graduate of College-Conservatory of Music at the Universityof Cincinnati [Ohio; CCM], just hit the road for her second stint with the Hadestown tour [Anaïs Mitchell; 3 October 2024-present]. This time she is adding co-dance captain to her swing track.

[For those who don’t know what a “dance captain” is and are curious, see my posts “Stage Hands” (14 January 2014) and “Interviews with Two Theater Pros: Theater Photographer & Dance Captain” (6 May 2020). “Swings” are discussed in “Swings” (9 March 2016), “‘A Star Is Made’” (23 November 2019), and “Understudies” (6 May 2024).]

Since graduation, Schick’s been on the road or on a plane, living out of a suitcase. She stayed in New York after CCM’s senior showcase there, landing “multiple audition appointments almost immediately, which was a blessing, and I was so excited, but I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not prepared for this!’” Schick recalled with a laugh. Thankfully, her network of CCM alumni in the city was strong, and for the next two weeks of auditions, callbacks, and general meetings, she was able to couch-surf.

This whirlwind introduction to New York City proved fruitful. Schick signed with an agency and flew back and forth from Cincinnati for auditions and callbacks, including for the Hadestown tour. While packing up her apartment in Cincinnati, she learned she had booked it.

Before starting rehearsals in September, she landed another gig: a presentation of a new musical called After Pinocchio. “It was so fun and very much a learning experience,” Schick said. “I had never been a part of a process for a new show, so it was very educational to sit there and be like, ‘Oh, we’re developing these characters together.’”

[After Pinocchio is a new musical with a book by James Hindman, lyrics by Mark Henry, and music by Luke DiSomma that recently held an industry presentation in New York City in July 2024. The production was developed from scratch in under 10 weeks by the Yaya Theater Company, an international performing arts organization that operates between New York City and Shenzhen, China. The company focuses on theatrical productions that often incorporate youth performers and educational programs.

[The presentation was staged at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater on New York City’s Upper West Side. Specific plot details are closely held; however, the musical is described as a “wild and wonderful” reimagining that takes place in a “Puppet Land” setting.]

Schick felt that her training and experience prepared her for rehearsing an eight-role swing track and for being part of a months-long tour contract, but the road itself was a fresh experience. “What was new was the actual traveling,” she said, “because the Hadestown tour is a bus-and-truck tour, so we’re on a bus traveling to a new city with new weather and temperatures.”

The transition from college apartment living to life on the road was a crash course in adulting, but Schick said she soon found her rhythm, learning how to manage her health and stay ready to step into any of eight roles at a moment’s notice. (This year, it’s nine roles.) When her contract wrapped in May 2025, she took a brief vocal rest before heading to Covington, Kentucky, to work on several productions at the Carnegie Theatre, including choreographing The Color Purple [Marsha Norman. Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray; 27 June-6 July 2025] with a director she’d previously collaborated with at CCM. Next she traveled to New York to join City Center’s pre-production choreography workshop for last fall’s Encores! revival of Bat Boy [Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O’Keefe; 29 October-9 November 2025].

[Encores! is a concert series dedicated to reviving American musicals, usually with their original orchestrations. The semi-staged concerts are presented by New York City Center and the project won a Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 2000. Encores! is committed to presenting seldom-performed musicals and the productions follow what the celebrated composers and lyricists originally wrote as closely as possible—based on prodigious research and digging. They present only five performances of the plays with minimal props and costumes, and the actors carry scripts (though they have memorized their lines, and especially the lyrics). The book’s dialogue is carefully pared; nevertheless, several of the presentations have transferred to Broadway.]

In the midst of all her far-flung jobs, Schick’s home base was her family’s home in Kennesaw, Georgia, where her dad runs Firefly Theatrical, a children’s theatre company. Schick makes extra cash there teaching classes, organizing costumes, and cleaning the theatre.

She also had another cushion: Schick received the [2024] Stewart F. Lane Fellowship for Career Advancement through the American Theatre Wing, a $10,000 award. Candidates for the fellowship are selected from the graduating class of Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative University Scholarship recipients, and the funds support the transition from college to career. She’s saving half of that for her eventual move to New York City in the summer, while the rest has been useful for various flights back and forth in the interim (and a new suitcase).

In the meantime, she’s embracing the reality that opportunities might take her in another direction. “It’s scary to go into the next couple of years with so much unknown,” Schick admitted. “I have a plan, but that plan could be uprooted by booking a job at a regional theatre in California, or doing another year of Hadestown, or booking another tour. Sometimes I have to sit and look back and be like, I have done some amazing things, and I’m very happy with where I am right now. I feel very confident that wherever I end up next will be correct for me.”

Land-Based Roots

Since graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts [Winston-Salem], sound designer Kai Machuca’s career has been a wild ride—literally. Within two months, the New Jersey native had moved to Orlando, Florida, to begin working as an A/V design engineer for Videlio-HMS, which provides entertainment and audiovisual systems for cruise ships and theme parks.

Machuca initially wanted to skip college and move straight to New York City, but at his mother’s urging, he enrolled in UNCSA. He’s glad he did. The design curriculum expands beyond theatre, and students build skills in sound for various entertainment applications. “My interests lie in themed entertainment, video games, and anything that sort of puts the audience in a different world,” said Machuca.

In addition to design and production courses, UNCSA also offers personal finance classes, portfolio and website-building workshops, sessions on developing side gigs for sound designers, and even a guest lecture from a union member on how to manage finances while on tour.

While Machuca felt ready to enter the field, the pandemic had reshaped job prospects, as video game companies underwent acquisitions and widespread layoffs. Machuca’s program director sent along a job posting for a sound engineering role at Videlio-HMS, and it felt like a good fit.

“I was definitely scared, but I knew that my school had set me up for success, and I had worked my butt off to try to get all my ducks in a row,” said Machuca. “So I was really focused on, how do I present myself in the best way possible, so people see who I am as a person and also as a worker?” 

While many classmates hit the road with touring productions or moved to New York City to cut their teeth, Machuca sought a more stable path—one that would allow him to put down roots, pursue virtual reality hobbies, and maybe even get a pet someday. Machuca settled in Orlando and found community through a local gym, LGBTQ groups, and the NextGen chapter of the Themed Entertainment Association with other young professionals.

At Videlio-HMS, Machuca works on a team of 11 focused on land-based entertainment. Machuca worked on interactive/immersive mini-games and the Yoshi’s Adventure ride at Universal Epic Universe. One of the best parts of the experience was when the team did sound tuning overnight in the park as part of the install.

“You’re in an empty theme park and there’s no one around, and it’s like your own little playground for a few hours,” he said. “You can experiment and get to just appreciate the musical art and acoustical genius that goes into such a huge project. It’s creatively satisfying in the best way. I would just come home to my apartment, dancing around, just saying, ‘I love my job, I love my job!’ over and over again.”

Machuca’s long-term goal is to move further into the creative side of themed entertainment. His advice to college seniors: Be ready to step outside your comfort zone.

“For me, it was, I’m going to do this engineering gig that I don’t think I’ll be very good at, and I ended up being pretty good at it,” Machuca said. “Your goals might shift, your interests might shift, and that’s okay. You’re not losing yourself by going into something different from what your current plan is. That path is going to wind in ways that you never expected.”

Yes Man

Henry Crater, a BFA musical theatre graduate from the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor], hit the ground running after his senior showcase in spring 2024. After five days in New York City meeting with agents, he traveled to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, to begin rehearsals for a summer stock season at Thingamajig Theatre Company. The acting company performed three shows in rotating repertory—Escape to Margaritaville [Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley, based on the songs of Jimmy Buffett], Beautiful [Douglas McGrath, Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil;], and Beauty and the Beast [Linda Woolverton, Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice]—while operating the set changeovers and teaching summer camp. “I thrive in an environment like that. I like being really busy,” said Crater.

[Thingamajig Theatre is a nonprofit professional theater company in residence at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts. It presents professional theater year-round with artist from across the country, in musicals, comedies, dramas, and new works. It also provides educational opportunities for children with theater classes and camps.]

After that three-month contract, Crater signed a lease for an apartment in NYC’s Hamilton Heights [a neighborhood in the northern part of Manhattan in New York City] with two former classmates, where he’s been auditioning and working on his self-tape skills.

“When it rains, it pours,” he said of his career so far. “One week I’ll have zero auditions, the next week, four—with two on the same day. It’s just crazy. I’m lucky to have an agent that I love working with, who’s been really good about getting the auditions that I feel right for and I’m excited about.”

Crater’s post-graduation year has been about learning to set his own schedule and finding his footing in the city. Crater, who grew up on Sanibel Island, Florida, and moved to New York from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has adjusted with the help of earplugs and white noise at night. The other big shift has been mental: “Being on the audition grind and then watching my very close friends book Broadway, book the West End, that was hard too. I know that my time is going to come, and it’ll happen when it happens. I think the biggest surprise is just the realization that I’m here for the long run—I’m not here to find instant fame or success.”

To make rent between acting gigs, he works 15-20 hours a week as an SAT prep tutor, both through the Princeton Review and with private clients. He also earns income performing with a church choir weekly and taking on occasional music gigs. “I have a really good deal on my rent, and I tend to be a pretty frugal spender. I actually am really proud of this,” said Crater, adding that he maintains a detailed budget spreadsheet.

Lately Crater has been gravitating toward acting and takes a weekly class at Bob Krakower’s studio.“I feel like I’ve learned more about acting in the past year of my life than I did in school,” he said. “I think, for me, it took a combination of learning, absorption, application, and practice.”

Crater, who was a music composition minor and plays guitar and piano, formed a band called Cereal Monogamy with some fellow actors to keep his creative juices flowing. “I bought three guitars in the past year just to kind of keep my happiness and my artistry up, and I’ve been playing so much more,” he said. “We don’t really make money from that, but it’s for fun.”

It was also good practice for Crater’s most recent role, as Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet Christmas [book by Colin Escot] at Sierra Repertory Theatre [14 November-21 December 2024] in Sonora, California. Beyond that, Crater has a list of goals for himself in 2026: Release his band’s EP, present his one-act musical Einstein in Love, book some TV or film work, maybe even land a Broadway role.

As he looks back on his first year out of school, here’s his advice to the class of 2026: “Say yes to everything social, say yes to everything artistic, say yes to everything audition-wise. You never know what’s going to happen, so don’t limit yourself in literally any way.”

Balancing Acts

Pria Dahiya studied directing and social and political history at Carnegie Mellon University [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]—a path that took some convincing from her parents, both teachers who attended business school. Before starting college, Dahiya, who had some internships at regional theatres under her belt, supplied them with data about what kinds of jobs she could do after graduation. The picture when she did finally graduate in 2024, though, has been cloudier.

“What’s heartbreaking to me is that some of those jobs that looked really promising do not exist anymore, because there’s been such a shrinking in the industry,” Dahiya said recently. “It felt like the building blocks of the reality that I understood the theatre ecosystem to be when setting myself up for this career have since proven to be something very different.”

Case in point: Pittsburgh’s three major theatre companies are currently weighing a merger into one overarching institution. Upon graduation, Dahiya stayed in Pittsburgh to create multimedia and experiential projects with her own company, New Product Company. She did so while juggling multiple jobs: a gallery assistant role with eight-hour shifts on her feet, an arts educator gig at a local company, and a three-month 9-to-5 at an AI tech company, which cemented her determination to avoid any future desk jobs.

The balancing act of producing work while holding multiple jobs became untenable, so Dahiya recently moved back home to Bethesda, Maryland. From there she can focus on applying to director residency programs, fellowships, and funding opportunities, while continuing to develop projects. Most recently, she directed a staged reading at Montgomery College in Rockville [Maryland] and remounted a concert she originally helmed last year at Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh. In May, New Product Company will present Are You Are, a modern adaptation of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. [1920].

While she’s worked nonstop since graduation, Dahiya, who recently turned 24, finds it hard to measure success. “I’ve done these great fellowships,” said Dahiya, who has contributed to American Theatre after being part of its Critical Insight partnership with Pittsburgh Public Theater. “I’ve directed shows at a level that I feel very proud and confident of. I’ve started my own theatre company. To me, these are really important—they’re goals I’ve had for myself for years and years and years. And yet to articulate that to anyone outside of my field, it sounds like my life is falling apart because I don’t have any money.”

For Dahiya, this first year-and-a-half out of school has been an exploration of how her directing skills apply to other industries.

“What’s bringing me joy is that I’ve been moving away from narrowly categorizing myself as a theatre artist,” she said. Recently, a curator found a video art piece Dahiya posted on Instagram, titled “How to Work Out for Alt Girls,” and selected it for an installation at the Fugue Gallery in New York. “It’s so funny to me that my New York premiere is not a play I directed but a video art piece that I put on a television. It kind of speaks to the fact that that’s how work is getting discovered.”

For directors just starting out, there’s no talent representative for job placement, just networking and persistence. Mentors have been invaluable to her hustle. Bricolage Production Company and Quantum Theatre [both in Pittsburgh]—both of them with strong CMU alumni connections—have also played a key role in supporting her as she established her own company.

“My relationships with older theatre professionals have been so fruitful and so fulfilling,” said Dahiya. “Having people who have been unflinchingly supportive of me and who I can call when I’m being offered a contract and be like, ‘Am I being criminally underpaid? Should I negotiate this?’ I’m never going to be able to fully express the amount of gratitude I have toward all these people.”

Dahiya’s advice to graduating seniors is to ask themselves if they feel they need to be doing theatre at a certain level to be happy.

“I decided a long time ago that even if I never work professionally, I will be fulfilled as long as I can do exactly what I’m doing,” she said. “There’s always going to be a way that I can create community events and invite people together. It’s not a skill that I’m ever going to grow out of or age out of. It’s always there, and I’m probably gonna get better as I get older. That’s something that gives me a lot of comfort.”

[Allison Considine is a former senior editor of American Theatre magazine.  Based in Brooklyn, she works at a mission-driven tech startup by day and moonlights as a theatre critic.  She is also the editor of AT Education Monthly.] 

*  *  *  *
“WHO’S AFRAID OF THE NEXT STAGE?”
by Allison Considine 

[The companion article for “Career Prep for the Arts” was drawn from AT Education Monthly, of which Allison Considine is the editor.  It’s not included in the print edition of AT, but was posted online on 18 February 2026.]

In this month’s newsletter, we look at a new pilot program at South Coast Rep and hear from educators on keys to preparing students for the professional world.

I hope you’re staying warm. I spent some time earlier this month in sunny Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and it was a cruel return to the snow in New York. Speaking of California, I had the pleasure of connecting with UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts and South Coast Repertory [Costa Mesa, California] to learn about The Next Stage, a partnership to bridge the gap between theatre training and professional practice.

The pilot program, years in the making, launched this year with two SCR shows in repertory: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Edward Albee; 24 January-21 March 2026] and God of Carnage [Yasmina Reza; 23 January-21 March 2026], running through March 21. The initiative integrates MFA students directly into the process, including two student understudies, a stage management student serving as a PA to support the changeover between the two shows, a dramaturgy student, and a sound design student assisting on both productions. It also brings SCR staffers to campus to teach undergraduate students.

“We wanted to formalize this framework so that we could create a professional on-ramp experience for students, to bring them out of learning within the classroom and into a professional theatre space,” says Joel Veenstra, chair of the theatre department. “It’s kind of like an intense residency program as well as an apprenticeship—a two-way street, where we’re going into the theatre, but then they have members of their community as well coming to UCI to teach, engage, and enhance the experience of our community to elevate this cross-collaborative bridge.”

For SCR artistic director David Ivers, the partnership was a natural fit—and one that mirrors the kind of training he received as an MFA student at the University of Minnesota [Minneapolis] in collaboration with the Guthrie Theater [Minneapolis]. It also reflects models he experienced at Utah Shakespeare Festival [Cedar City] and Denver Center Theatre Company [Colorado], where he served as artistic director of the former and as a member of the resident acting company at the latter. “My career as an actor and a director was never separated from the benefits of having brilliant young minds around.”

And the benefits of The Next Stage go beyond the youthful energy in the rehearsal room. “The real benefit for SCR is that we’re making a commitment to the future of the field. SCR benefits by having direct contact with what’s coming right out of the institution. We also benefit by expanding our workforce…Why wouldn’t we choose to work with students who are just about to be in the profession to both help shape and learn from to figure out what the next iteration of the American theatre is going to be?”

MFA student Esther Pielstick, who is understudying the role of Honey [in Virginia Woolf], has relished being in the rehearsal room and witnessing the commitment of the professional actors. “Learning from people who have been doing this for a long time and who are working professionally makes me so hungry to want to do this and to be a part of that process . . . It’s a really powerful feeling, and sometimes you lose that because, in the arts, you can get discouraged, but like this feeling of like, ‘Okay, no, I can do this, and I want to do this—people are doing this, it’s possible,’” says Pielstick.

Looking ahead, SCR plans to include five student performers in next season’s repertoire, with current students providing feedback to inform future iterations, including a formalized mentorship program. “It’s really exciting that everyone’s wanting to make this a long-term relationship that’s going to be best for the students as we continue in the future,” says Pielstick.

Representation on stage—and seeing people build careers in the arts—is essential to sustaining the American theatre pipeline.

In case you missed it, this important report highlights the education and training programs at risk due to the Kennedy Center’s transition to the Trump administration and its upcoming closure for renovations—disruptions that constrict this important pipeline [see “Career Prep for the Arts, Part 3,” to be posted on 8 April].

As some education programs close and contract, we see more partnerships like The Next Stage emerge between schools and professional theatres.

[The third part of “CareerPrep for the Arts” will be published on Wednesday, 8 April.  Please come back to Rick On Theater then to read the concluding selections from AT’s annual education and training issues.]

"Design & Tech: The Magic Of Design," Articles 5 & 6

 

[There are two articles from American Theatre’s “Design & Tech” Special Section in the fourth installment on Rick On Theater.  The first is a report on robots on stage and the second is a description of the Costume Collection run by the Theatre Development Fund, a boon for costume designers from all over the country.

[As I’ve affirmed all along, these nine articles are independent of one another, aside from their common theme of theatrical design and technology, and it makes no difference to their comprehension in what order you read them.  Nonetheless, I strongly recommend checking out the four preceding articles already posted in this series because they cover many important aspects of current design and tech applications on today’s stages.  The first three instalments were posted on 9, 12, and 15 September.]

 

“DO ROBOTS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SCENE PARTNERS?”
by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk

[Van Wijk’s discussion of robots in use on theater stages was posted on the AT website on 6 July 2016 as a feature of “Education.”  It’s one of the articles in this series that didn’t appear in the print edition of the magazine.]

Robots onstage are less likely to replace humans than to heighten the contradictions of the human condition in a technological age.

In recent years, the question of where theatre and technology meet, and if they should at all, has been in the air. From live-tweeting during plays to tech-driven shows [Article 1, posted 9 September], theatremakers have their brains in the Cloud. With technology onstage and off reaching greater and more ambitious heights, what’s next frontier? Most likely robots.

And not just actors playing robots, as in Mac Rogers‘s riff on Kar[e]l Capek [1890-1938], Universal Robots [first presented: 2007 Off-Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Source; based on Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920], but actual programmable performers constructed of metal and wire. As a playwright, I’m personally interested in the topic of robotics in theatre. So while pursuing an MFA in playwriting at Carnegie Mellon University, I have attempted to make work with a robot.

In 2014 and 2015, I collaborated with a roboticist and artist named Garth Zeglin, and we attempted to create a short play, Remembering, for a robot named Herb, who lives at Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics lab in Pittsburgh. The piece featured an unnamed man putting his deceased father’s belongings into boxes with the help of his son’s robot. It was a fitting topic, considering that Herb is a robot that was made to physically assist the elderly. But because Herb lives in the university lab, his parts are always being upgraded and replaced. When I met him, Herb’s body comprised of [sic] a large metal torso supporting two robot arms, an X-Box Kinetic camera for eyes, and legs on a Segway base. He also wore a bowtie.

“The Herb project was originally a side project of the Carnegie Mellon robotics lab,” says Zeglin. “The notional thought was that drama has the lessons that talk about how bodies communicate meaning, and maybe we could use that in research.”

I was first inspired when I learned Herb had previously performed in a play, directed by then-BFA directing student Sam French. He felt the project would allow him to explore elements of theatre not examined in his university experience thus far. “I was really burned out on the phrase ‘the human condition,’” says French, now a freelance director. “I was interested in a production that looked at the human condition of a robot. I wanted to do anything to show that that phrase could sometimes be meaningless.”

This short experiment resulted in a scene from All in the Timing [1993] by David Ives, performed by Herb and a student actress named Olivia Lemmon. It was a fruitful if technically challenging experience, according to French. The “biggest roadblock,” French says, is that “the internal clocks of the processes for a human actor and a robot are just not the same.”

Still, though it took a robotics team to program reactions into Herb that would be instantaneous for a human actor, French was inspired by the interactions between the human body and technology.

“What was really beautiful about it was actually bringing Herb in,” he says. “Rather than removing an actor, it felt like we were adding 20 actors. The team was helping to develop his movements, his voice. And it was all being done from a dramaturgical and a scientific perspective.”

Eventually the lab’s work on Herb went in a different direction: He started as a fully functioning robot but ended up reduced to just a hand, and ultimately there was no way to perform with him. But that doesn’t mean that a collaboration between theatre artists and robots is impossible.

Robot-based production and theatre collaboration often develop between universities or faculty and theatre artists. A Double Bill of One-Acts, written and directed by Oriza Hirata and featuring the Seinendan Theater Company [Tokyo] and the Osaka University Robot Theatre Project, premiered at the Japan Society in New York City in February 2013 before touring nationwide.

For Washington University in St. Louis’s acting professor Annamaria Pileggi, work in the world of robotics began when she started working with Bill Smart, a roboticist at WU. “Originally, I started doing research exploring the use of actor training techniques to improve human/robot interactions,” says Pileggi. She and Smart developed a series of short exercises featuring humans and robots performing nonverbal actions. One memorable piece, The Forgiveness Piece, featured a human actor seeking forgiveness, wordlessly, from a robot.

“At the time, we had a very rudimentary robot that was like a trashcan on wheels with a camera for eyes, and no arms or legs,” recalls Pileggi.

The tests resulted in a commissioned play called SKY SKY SKY by Liza Birkenmeier, an alumna who had acted in the experiments. The play, which ran in March 2015 at the university, imagines a world where an elderly woman named Joan puts her life in the hands of a robot caretaker, with the intention of ending her life. The actions of a robot named Harris were programmed by David Lu, a doctoral candidate at the time.

“When we were workshopping scenes with Harris, he would have maybe 30 seconds of what I would call choreographic demands,” says Birkenmeier. And as with any piece of complicated technology, working with a robot led to a number of glitches.

“At one point, Harris was supposed to brush my hair, and that didn’t quite work out as planned,” recalls Nancy Lewis, who played the elderly Joan. “My hair got caught and he kept going. It was one of those things where you realize: Okay, this isn’t a real person. Someone has to stop him.”

Like people, different robots have different abilities and strengths, as well as different kinds of bodies. A production in New York City last year used a robot with a less imposing physical presence who could respond to questions: the bust-sized Bina48, a social robot created by Martine Rothblatt and Hanson Robotics. (Bina48 stands for “Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture 48.”)

Bina48 was modeled after Martine’s partner, Bina; thorough research and interviews with Bina served as the foundation for the social robot’s persona. Director Andrew Scoville came across Bina48 while researching trans-humanism, a broad philosophical ideology concerned with ways that humans can be enhanced and harmed by technology. Last fall, for the Big Outdoor Site Specific Stuff Festival [October 2015], run by En Garde Arts [New York City-based theater company specializing in site-specific performances], Scoville created An Evening with Bina48, which ran at the Hudson River Park. It featured Bina48 interacting with actress Lynne Rosenberg. “We landed on this idea of a blind date,” recalls Scoville. “The success of the piece rode on Lynne. She was able to dance with Bina48 in a way that I think was essential to making the piece work.”

The rehearsal process for the production was less like a traditional rehearsal process and more like going over a game plan, Scoville explains. The key was making sure that Rosenberg was comfortable and that logistics were in place to handle where the conversation would go, as well as how to end the date.

Bina48 is supposed to be able to carry a conversation in her Siri-like speech patterns. But occasionally she would respond to a question with a non sequitur, or—in a way that was arguably quite human-like—without responding to the question at all.

“Once, Lynne asked her, ‘Do you feel comfortable talking with me?’ and she just answered in this way that was truly nonsensical,” recalls En Garde Arts executive producer Anne Hamburger. “She went off onto something else altogether. But you could also see how the audience was so interested in her, and what she would do or say next.”

Dramaturgical functions notwithstanding, a common thread among these robot theatre collaborations is a simple appeal: Working with robots is just plain cool.

“It’s not about replacing humans,” says Scoville. “I’ve always been very curious about robots.” To him, robots can just be another tool in a dramatist’s toolkit. Like other tech-heavy effects, such as video design, “We just have to accept them for what they are, and the limitations that they bring.”

Theatre artists aren’t going to stop working with robot[s] any time soon. If anything, the prospect is becoming mainstream: Cirque du Soleil’s newest show Paramour, currently running on Broadway [Cirque du Soleil Paramour, May 2016-April 2017], features eight drones flying over the actors and audiences (a collaboration with Verity Studios). The kicker is that these robots are autonomous; no remote control is needed.

Considering that audiences have a hard time just turning off their phones in the theatre, is putting robots onstage just feeding our debilitating dependence on devices? Have we reached peak technology?

“I left this work feeling even more conflicted about technology, because I’m dependent on it, and yet I see how it’s isolating us as a society,” admits Pileggi.

As for me, I find this ambivalence to be the most compelling element about making robot-based work. If a robot can provide comfort, labor, or entertainment, then shouldn’t humans be providing the same for one another? The stilted-ness of a robot’s movements and speech patterns should serve to illuminate our own seamless bodies, their agelessness heightening our aging flesh.

It is my hope that after an evening of robot-based theatre, when the novelty of robotics has lost its sheen, the unanswerable question of what makes us truly human will remain—and theatre artists and audience members will seek answers, with or without the help of robots by their sides.

[Amy Gijsbers van Wijk is a journalist and playwright based in New York City.

[One participant in robot theater says, “Rather than removing an actor, it felt like we were adding 20 actors,” and another asserts, “It’s not about replacing humans.”  The contradiction is disconcerting—and not at all comforting. 

[Just as the American Federation of Musicians was exercised by the appearance of recorded music and synthesized orchestras, displacing live musicians in a theater’s pit (see “The Sound of Muzak,” posted on ROT on 16 June 2011), something tells me that Actors’ Equity Association and the other performers’ unions are watching very carefully and preparing for a campaign against robotic actors on U.S. stages.]

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“WORN AGAIN AT THE TDF COSTUME COLLECTION”
by Allison Considine

[Considine’s article on the Costume Collection appeared only online at https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/07/06/worn-again-at-the-tdf-costume-collection/, posted on 6 July 2016; it wasn’t published in AT’s print edition.]

Threads from Broadway, tours, and the Met hang out between engagements at an Astoria warehouse that’s now accessible to shows all over the U.S.

“Oh, if only these costumes could talk . . .”

Stephen Cabral repeats this as he leads me through the impressive home of the estimated 80,000 costumes at the TDF Costume Collection. Housed in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, the costumes—most originally created for theatre and opera productions in New York City—hang in 12 rows 4 tiers high. In the last year, 12,000 of them have traveled to 36 states and appeared in more than 1,000 productions across the country.

“In some ways, most of TDF’s programs are about getting people into the seats,” says Cabral of Theatre Development Fund, which runs Times Square’s TKTS booth [same-day discount tickets to matinee and evening performances of Broadway and Off Broadway musicals, plays, and dance productions; there are three other locations in the city (with varying hours and practices); check the TDF webiste], as well as a popular membership program. “Our program is not about getting people into the seats—it is about the experience they have once they are in the seats.”

As the director of the collection, Cabral is a walking encyclopedia of costume history; at a glance he can usually recall where certain costumes came from, many of the productions they were rented out for, even the famous stars who wore them onstage. As we turned a corner, he pointed to an elaborate brocade cape that was donated by the Metropolitan Opera. The weighty piece is one of many in the collection from the Met, the organization that kickstarted the collection with a generous donation in 1969.

Costumes find their way to the collection by way of touring shows, estate donations, and the unfortunate scrap of Broadway costumes in previews—such as pairs of tall military boots I spy on a top shelf that appeared in Hamilton when it was at the Public Theater [Newman Theater, January-May 2015]. No donation is ever turned away, a policy that has amassed bins upon bins of patent leather dress shoes and the occasional gem. Cabral describes the process of sorting through a new donation like Christmas: You never know what piece will come through the doors.

The collection is separated by type of garment and period: Bustles live in aisle 7, flapper fare can be found in aisle 6, Shakespearean styles can be located in aisle 10, etc. The many designations are laid out in a handy map for customers, many who pull the costumes themselves.

“It is a little more leg work for the customers that come in,” says Cabral. “But they can create the show by going to the specific period of the show they need. It allows the designers who come in really great artistic freedom, because they are not taking someone else’s idea of a show—they are pulling their vision of the show.”

On any given day among the racks, Broadway designers mingle with parents volunteering to pull costumes for an elementary school play. For theatres located too far away to travel to the collection in person, the TDF Costume Collection recently began offering the services of an in-house designer who can assist in pulling a show: A costume designer can provide TDF with sketches, research on the production, and the cast’s measurements, and TDF’s in-house designer can pull costumes and ship them anywhere in the United States.

The services rendered by the costume collection thus allow nonprofit theatres to [. . .] put quality costumes onstage at little cost. Prices are determined on a sliding scale according to the length of performance and the number of seats in a facility. A costume is defined as anything that an actor can wear at one time, from bootstraps to bonnets.

And while Western hats and Colonial coats can be spotted at church productions and in school auditoriums, costume pieces from the collection also appear in films and on the occasional episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Costumes are rented to commercial projects on the basis of artistic merit—the collection is not the place for social events or high-end Halloween parties to browse, and they’re not allowed to be rented for anywhere that food and drink will be present. In any case, large corporations pay more. “In some ways our commercial rentals are helping to offset the costs of running the place for the not-for-profits,” says Cabral.

As we pass racks of clothing that have already been pulled for shows, I spot a blue silk gown and a row of coat blankets for a production of Gypsy. Nearby hangs a row of curtain dresses and nun’s habits gathered for The Sound of Music.

[On the assumption that a coat blanket is the same as a “blanket coat,” it’s a long coat, often with a hood, made from a blanket (Native American blankets are very popular, and may have been the origin of the practice) or blanket material; they may be belted or not.  It’s also called a ‘capote,’ which originated in Canada among fur traders.

[By the same token, a curtain dress, as far as I can gather, is a dress made either from an actual curtain (think Scarlett’s famous green gown in Gone with the Wind or the parody in The Carol Burnett Show’s 1976 “Went with the Wind!” sketch—but I even found a reference to a dress made from a shower curtain) or from curtain fabric.  Another interpretation is a dress that drapes over the body rather than being fitted; I found a reference that called an Indian sari a “curtain dress.” ~Rick]

Next Cabral takes me to the Special Stock Room, a section deemed worthy for brand-new pieces, costumes from notable productions, and pieces built by well-known designers. There I walk between bedazzled suit jackets designed by William Ivey Long for The Boy from Oz [1998; Broadway, 2003] and a hand-beaded evening gown by Bob Mackie. There are also some newer, brightly colored fairy-tale dresses and bright green leisure suits—popular items for costume designers looking to jazz up a classic show.

“Everyone is doing their own spin on different period,” says Cabral. “Nobody wants to do a production of Titus Andronicus that looks like a period production of the show.”

But there are also historic pieces in pristine condition, properly swoon-worthy for period productions. I pull out an Elizabethan gown with intricately embroidered sleeves; it is so heavy that Cabral helps to hold it up. The gown was built in the 1970s for the Met, and Cabral shows me the corset stays inside the waist and the adjustable fasteners on the seam that have allowed for the dress to be worn by performers of many sizes. Clearly the Met spared no expense, and the ornate costumes have lived on: Eight tags are sewn inside with different actress[es]’ names.

Customers can gain access to the Special Stock Room if they have rented from the regular stock and followed the rules of the collection, returning each piece within the allotted time and dry cleaned. As we reenter the regular stock room, Cabral shows me a distressed velvet jacket with gold buttons. The piece once lived in the Special Stock Room, and like many costumes, the repeated dry cleaning, sweat under hot stage lights, and gradual wear and tear have moved it through to the regular stock room and into the “distressed” aisle—a haven for designers pulling for Les Misèrables. In a few years, the jacket may appear in one of the two annual bin sales that the collection holds, at which hundreds of customers seeking costumes for high schools and church plays pay a flat fee to fit as many pieces into a bag. It’s an event that sometimes dictates what shows a given organization is able to produce that year. Other designers sort through the recycled pieces with measurements in hand, pulling specifically for productions.

The loudspeaker sounds that it’s almost closing time, and costume designer Kate Mincer scurries to gather helmets from a bin. She is pulling pieces of armor for a Nine Inch Nails-inspired dystopian Rome production of Julius Caeser in Stonington, Me. The TDF Costume Collection is one of many places that she has come to gather armor pieces that are too difficult to build. “It is possible to put together a really sophisticated show and to give the audience what they want to see,” says Mincer about her many trips to the TDF Costume Collection over the years.

“This is the type of situation that is a big portion of our business, where designers are not getting the entire show here,” Cabral adds. “People are getting the portion that is impossible to build, or the portion that is too expensive to build.”

[Costumes can be “made,” but inside the world of theater, especially among designers and costumers, they are “built”—just like sets and scenery. ~Rick]

Mincer says she plans to ship the [. . .] unwieldy armor up to Maine, another helpful service provided by the collection.

Before I depart, I try on a massive hat from the Christmas Spectacular Show at Radio City Music Hall; judging from the ruffled feathers, it made its debut many Christmases ago. I’m reminded of that feeling an actor has when they first try on their costume—that simultaneous sense of transformation and ownership, as the clothing changes you and you take that on.  At the costume collection, that feeling is elevated—after all, the hat on my head was worn by [a] Rockette. And who knows? The dress you may try on just may have been created for Carol Burnett.

[Allison Considine is the senior editor of American Theatre.  She studied literature and cultural studies and theatre arts at Pace University.

[The next installment of ROT’s republication of American Theatre’s “Design & Tech” Special Section will appear on Tuesday, 21 September.  Article 7 is all about flying on stage—and I’ll let you all see what that means.  I encourage all ROTters to come back then to read the next articles in the series there are some very interesting topics on the fields of theater technology and design still to come.]

"Hear, Hear: Spotlight on Sound Design," Articles 1 & 2

 

[Periodically, American Theatre magazine, published monthly by the Theatre Communications Group, runs a special section on an important theater subject, usually one with which most theatergoers aren’t familiar.  In the past, I’ve republished several of these series, such as “Light The Lights” on lighting design (October and November 2018) and “Arts Administration” (December 2020).

[In July/August 2019, AT published eight articles on the art of sound design.  (Only three articles appeared in the print edition of the monthly; the other five were posted on TCG’s website, https://www.americantheatre.org/category/special-section/hear-spotlight-on-sound-design/. 

[As part of my ad hoc series on theater work about which most people don’t know—in the past I’ve covered stage managers, swing dancers, and wigmakers on Rick On Theatre, among others—I’ll be running these articles in six posts, starting below with the editor’s introduction and a piece on a computer app useful to singers.]

This installment of [the American Theatre] annual design issue turns up the volume on one of the most under-sung—and commonly misunderstood—branches of the design department. What exactly do sound designers do (and not do)? How do they learn to do it? And how are new innovations in technology changing the way they work? Read on to sound the depths of these and other topics.

“LEND ME YOUR EARS”
by Rob Weinert-Kendt 

Stage sound comprises more than dialogue, effects, and music, and the folks who design it are doing more than mere augmentation.

One dividing line that’s often posited about narrative art forms might be summed up as visual vs. verbal. It’s a common formulation that film is a visual medium and theatre a verbal one, or at least that each occupies a roughly opposite place on a continuum between those two poles. There are elements of truth in this popular dichotomy, but not a lot, I would argue. The main difference between recorded and live media, it seems to me, is neatly suggested by those descriptors: One is packaged and predetermined, often intimate in feeling but fixed in its outcome; the other is blessedly, unnervingly indeterminate, simultaneously distanced from a crowd’s gaze and irreducibly immediate.

But there’s another important thing the visual/verbal contrast leaves out: the aural element. The sound of plays (and films, for that matter) does not comprise simply dialogue, after all. And theatrical sound design, as we learn in a package of stories in this issue, is more than the business of crickets and phone rings. It starts with the very shape of the space where theatre happens, the people who fill it, and the air in the room, as Naveen Kumar details in an excellent overview of acoustic design and science behind it [posted on 3 April]. Indeed acoustics are related to dialogue in this way: You can’t always know what works until an audience is there to reflect or absorb it.

One thing we hope to do with this issue is clarify some of the misunderstandings that still persist around sound design. Jerald Raymond Pierce’s overview of the field highlights one common misconception: that sound designers and composers are effectively interchangeable, and/or that a person with either title automatically can do both jobs. Indeed many do—which makes sense, as designing sound for a show is roughly akin to composing a score for it [posted on 9 April]. But knowing exactly who’s expected to do what, and just as importantly who’s getting paid for it, is as crucial a distinction as knowing the difference between such overlapping but not identical job descriptions as dramaturg and director, or fight choreographer and intimacy choreographer.

And though we’re challenged in a magazine—a medium both verbal and visual, but alas not aural—to show you the work, we have Caroline Macon Fleischer’s vividly descriptive roundup of some exciting sound innovations and experiments from around the nation and the globe, from Amazon rainforest soundscapes to biorhythms [posted on 6 April]. (We are planning to include audio clips for as many of these as we can, so be sure to check out the online version of Caroline’s piece at https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/07/02/6-productions-that-push-the-sonic-envelope/.)

Since 2016 each July/August we’ve put our focus on some aspect of design: magic, theatre architecture, lighting, and this year sound. [The July 2020 issue of AT featured a focus on costume design.] If this year’s focus feels like a homecoming, or at least like it’s been a long time coming, it may be not only because sound design is an often overlooked and easily misunderstood field. It may also be because sound itself is elemental, pre-verbal. Hearing is the first sense we experience in the darkness of the womb, and many believe it’s the last sense to leave us. In the beginning was the light? Maybe in the beginning was the bang.

[Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theatre for the New York Times, Time Out NY, and the Los Angeles Times. He studied film at the University of Southern California and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.

[Readers might note that ROT published a post called “Words and Pictures?” on 25 July 2014.  Inspired by the film Words and Pictures of that year, it looks at the debate set up in the movie between language and image.  Later, on 16 September 2014, I posted “Words with Pictures / Pictures with Words” which discusses some artists who used both text and visual imagery in their work.]

*  *  *  *
“HARMONY HELPER COULD BE A SINGER’S BEST FRIEND”
by Allison Considine 

The new app is designed to make vocal parts easy to learn for the rehearsal room and the stage. 

CHALLENGE
To create an innovative app to help performers learn music 

PLAN
To build an app with a library of songs that separates out vocal parts

WHAT WORKED
Building and creating an app with beta testing

WHAT NEEDS WORK
Promoting the app, building a full song library, incorporate testing

The Harmony Helper app was born of a stage disaster. Andrew Goren was just 13 years old when he booked his first professional theatre production, and his preparations for the musical—which featured an opening duet—fell apart at the open dress rehearsal. It wasn’t stage fright. Goren was equipped with a microphone and, for the first time, could hear his duet partner singing their harmony in his ear.

“I walked out onstage, opened my mouth, and I lost it all,” recalls Goren, now a sophomore at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “It was like I had forgotten how to sing, and that was devastating for me. I realized I had no idea how to harmonize.”

Goren started working on building the Harmony Helper app a few years ago with a team that has grown to include more than 40 designers and consultants, and a Chief Technology Officer. After several rounds of beta-testing, the app is slated to launch at the end of July. [The app is available now: https://harmonyhelper.com/.  A YouTube “User Guide Tutorial” is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ4M7kLdruU.]

Harmony Helper is designed for both beginners and experienced harmonizers. It claims to offer users a “24-hour rehearsal room in their back pocket,” says Goren. The app guides beginners through a five-step process that breaks down all the vocal parts, singles out a track, and gradually adds the harmonies back in after the user learns their own part.

Users don’t need to be able to read sheet music for Harmony Helper; vocal parts are displayed in varying colors and delineated lines. “We call it the great equalizer,” says Goren. “It doesn’t matter if you have a voice coach or an accompanist to teach you the music,” he says. “You can just pull out this from your back pocket, add your music, learn your song, and feel just as confident and prepared for whatever you’re rehearsing for.”

At this time, the app’s beta song library has just 7 public domain tunes, including “Happy Birthday” and “Star Spangled Banner.” Users can choose a song, select a voice part, and adjust volume controls for the parts, the metronome, and the accompaniment. Songs can be recorded and played back, and a proprietary algorithm provides users real-time feedback on harmonizing skills. When the full app launches, users will have the ability to upload PDFs or photos of sheet music or download songs through the app. Two subscription models will be available: An unlimited monthly subscription for $7.99 or an annual $75 subscription.

The concept for the Harmony Helper app was announced three years ago at BroadwayCon, an annual gathering of theatre fans, performers, and industry folks in New York City. “We came out first year just with a vision, some mockups, and wireframes, and the next year we came back with a proof of concept,” says Goren. The BroadwayCon community has been instrumental in beta-testing the app, offering feedback about the app’s usability and interface. “We really spent a lot of time making sure this process is as intuitive and familiar—just like a rehearsal process—so people don’t have to learn some new confusing technology,” says Goren.

This year Harmony Helper produced a tent-pole event at BroadwayCon, the Rising Star Singing Contest. Attendees, many clad in theatre-inspired costumes, performed 32-bar cuts of songs to accompaniment. Their performances were recorded and viewed by a group of celebrity judges, including Laura Benanti and Billy Porter. (The grand prize winner received tickets to Beetlejuice and a backstage tour from actor Rob McClure.) Aspiring stars and onlookers could interact with the app and learn about Harmony Helper at the BroadwayCon booth.

Other beta testers included students at the Paper Mill Playhouse’s conservatory programs, who learned all their music through the app last summer, and members of the American Choral Directors Association. The feedback from the development process led to the app’s ability to turn the accompaniment on or off, to more clearly delineate vocal parts, and an upgrade of the interface. Looking forward, there are plans to offer a subscription model designed for music directors, which will allow them to share music and voice parts with groups. Harmony Helper also plans to add a selection of choral music in the public domain to the app’s song library.

“Music directors have such little time to teach the music, and they are sitting there after rehearsal plunking out notes,” says Goren. “But now the cast members can learn the music on their own at home, come into rehearsal, and the music director can spend that valuable rehearsal time putting the finishing touches on the music.”

Goren’s ultimate goal is for the app to help other performers better prepare and avoid onstage mishaps—from theatre professionals to summer campers, from choir leads to shower warbling. Let the harmonizing begin.

[Allison Considine is the senior editor of American Theatre. She studied literature and cultural studies and theatre arts at Pace University.

[The next sound design articles, on taking inspiration from video games to make musical “underscoring” more like film soundtracks and training, both in class and on the job, for working in sound design, will be posted on Sunday, 28 March.  Please come back to ROT for the next installment of “Hear, Hear.”]