OBERLIN ADDS MUSICAL THEATER PROGRAM TO ITS CONSERVATORY OFFERINGS

Did you know that Julie Taymor, director of THE LION KING, John Kander, composer of the scores for 15 musicals, including CABARET and CHICAGO, and Alison Bechdel, author of FUN HOME, are graduates of Oberlin College? 

Do you realize that until this Fall, Oberlin did not have a degree in Musical Theater?

Both of these statements are true!

As stated by College President Carmen Twillie Ambar, “Oberlin is known throughout the world for its deep commitment to the arts, theater, and music. It therefore seemed perfectly appropriate to add music theater to our repertoire of excellence.”

The commitment goes beyond just adding the program, it entails an investment in space and specialized faculty—industry professionals with decades of experience in the field. 

Designed by local award-winning J. Kurtz Architects, a new facility has been located on the ground level of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center alongside the Hotel at Oberlin.  It will serve as the home for music theater teaching and training and be the central space for music theater majors as they discover, experiment, and realize their fullest potential at Oberlin.

The first floor of the hotel, originally designed to be commercial space, has been converted into nine faculty offices. The glass-fronted area is now two state of the art dance studios and 4 practice rooms.

The facility also contains the William and Helen Birenbaum Innovation and Performance Space (The Birenbaum).  It is an off-Broadway theatre with 100-flex space seating. The program will also use multiple shared performance spaces on campus, including the 501-seat Hall Auditorium and the Wurtzel flexible black box theater that can accommodate up to 300 seats. Just recently, music theater majors performed along with students throughout the conservatory in a welcome concert for new and transfer students and their families inside a packed 1,200-seat Finney Chapel.

Heading up the program is Victoria Bussert, who has directed more than 500 shows on stages across four continents and has established herself as one of the premiere music theater educators.

Before coming to Oberlin, Bussert was director of the Baldwin Wallace University’s music theater program, named by Backstage as one of the top musical theater programs in the nation, and the Hollywood Reporteras one of the 25 best drama schools in the world. More than 90 of her programs’ grads have gone onto the Great White Way, as well as numerous others into touring companies, summer stock and regional theaters.

Besides Bussert, the Oberlin music theater faculty consists of experienced teacher-performers dedicated to providing individual instruction and mentorship in a curriculum that supports professional careers in music theater. 

The initial faculty are Matthew Webb, Laura Welsh, Lauren Marousek, Colin Briskey, Gregory Lee Harrell and Broadway veterans Cassie Okenka and Alex Sanchez. (Sanchez has appeared in 10 Broadway productions and was nominated for 2024 Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Awards for co-choreographing THE GARDENS OF ANUNCIA and Okenka has clocked more than a decade as a Broadway performer including her stints as an original Broadway company member of BONNIE AND CLYDE and SCHOOL OF ROCK and headlining as Glinda in the first national tour of WICKED.)

The Oberlin Musical Theatre program is part of an evolution of the art.  The first of such curricula was in 1969 at the Cincinnati Conservatory.  Many of the programs which followed duplicated the Cincy curriculum and teaching methods.  The Oberlin program, with the motto, “At Oberlin, music theater isn’t an afterthought—it’s an art form,” according to the program director, will start from scratch, creating a unique approach.

Though it will have its own faculty, students will take core classes from the conservatory faculty. 

Following the announcement of the major on August 19, 2024, over 600 applications for the Freshman class were received.  After prescreening their videos, there were 456 live auditions and an incoming class of 20 were selected.  In addition, 55 transfer students, sophomores through seniors, from multiple schools, were invited to join this year’s program. Ideally, in the future, each academic grade-level will have 18-20 students.

In order to make their education affordable Oberlin will meet all students’ demonstrated need, ranging from full scholarships to limited aid.

This coming year, students will participate in on-campus productions including NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 (Wurtzel Theater, December 3-10), TICK, TICK. . .BOOM! (The Cat and the Cream, March 12-13),the academic premiere of STRANGER SINGS! THE PARODY MUSICAL (Birenbaum Theater, April 23-May 3), SPRING AWAKENING (at Beck Center for the Arts, February 12-March 1) and THE WORLD GOES ROUND, a musical review of the music of writing team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, presented by Great Lakes Theater at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square (May 16-17) and at Hidden Valley, located in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Range in the Carmel/Monterey, CA area (January 30-February 1). 

In addition, a fourth-year student showcase will be presented in New York March 23 and 24 at the Alvin Ailey Theatre for agents, managers, and casting directors.

The evening of March 24 following their final showcase, students will perform a concert at 54 Below.

Seniors will have an earlier opportunity to strut their stuff in NYC in October as part of "Broadway Sings," produced by Cory Mach, another one of Vicky's grads to make a career on and off-Broadway.

One of the program’s goals is to help every student meet the requirements to get their Equity card by the time they graduate.

An exciting aspect of the program is the master class series that invites 10 New York agents, managers, and casting directors to campus to hear students sing and offer their critiques. This allows music theater faculty to immediately incorporate real-world feedback to better equip students for careers post-graduation.

Additionally, representatives of 10 summer stock and regional theaters are invited to campus each year to audition students for summer work.

It is with great anticipation that the theater world looks to Oberlin to observe the development of its new program and count how many of its students will be added to the list of “Vicky’s Kids” who have made it in the professional world of the theater. 

Dynamic, A CHORUS LINE excites at Beck Center

 

A CHORUS LINE is considered by many theatre experts to be one of the shows that set the pattern for what is labeled the American Musical Theater.    First came THE BLACK CROOK (a smash-together of a melodrama and ballet).  Some of the other significant shows include SHOW BOAT (a story musical), OF THEE I SING (first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama),  OKLAHOMA (the recognized model for the “book musical,” a musical in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story), RENT (the script which many credit as the catalyst for the development of the serious dramatic musical), and A CHORUS LINE, (the show which stressed dance as the foundation for developing a musical theater production). A CHORUS LINE is a 1975 musical conceived by Michael Bennett with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by Nicholas Dante and Elyria’s James Kirkwood, Jr.. A CHORUS LINE had a different path to Broadway than most musicals.  It started out as a series of interviews of dancers of past and present Broadway shows conducted by director and choreographer Michael Bennett.    From the many hours of personal and professional information, a script was developed providing a glimpse into the personalities of the performers, as they describe the events that shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers. The original Broadway production ran for 6,137 performances, becoming, at that time, the longest-running production in Broadway history.  It received twelve Tony Award nominations and won nine, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show opens during an audition for a fictional upcoming Broadway production. The director and his assistant are putting the dancers through their paces. Every dancer, expresses their individual and collective hopes in "I Hope I Get It” their individual “I want song.”    After a round of cuts, 17 dancers remain.    Zach tells them he is looking for a dancing chorus of four boys and four girls, wants to learn more about them, wants each to introduce themselves. Reluctantly, they reveal their pasts with stories and songs of hope, pursuing of dreams, picking one’s self up and starting over again.   What is different in this show than the book musical format that Rodgers and Hammerstein laid out in OKLAHOMA?  Among other factors, there is no overture, no single structured story, and the curtain call is a choreographed dance number that is integrated into the production.     Little known facts about the development of the script are that the dancers who participated in the story-telling collection meetings originally received only $1 for their stories, and that some whose personal tales are told had to try out for the show.  Some of those were not cast.   A CHORUS LINE is a difficult show to stage.  The cast each has to dance, sing and act, all on a high level.  It is also an intense show to perform as the cast members are on-stage most of the time and are tasked with numerous exhausting routines.   Beck’s director and choreographer, Christopher Chase Carter’s cast is excellent in all aspects of their performances, though several of the males preened and “posed” at being, rather than actually “being” their characters.     Most of the performers are present or past students of the Baldwin Wallace’s Musical Theatre program or Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music.   Memorable moments were rendered by Jimmy Metz (Paul), whose tale of being a pony dancer in a sleezy theater evoked a spelling-binding hold on the audience, Julia Martin’s (Cassie) compelling dancing in “The Music and the Mirror,” the trio of Eilana Taub (Sheila), Bebe Moss (Bebe), and Andi Brooke Keller (Maggie) who sang “At the Ballet,” the wistful melody, whose harmonies grow and build, Dakota Krouse (Mike) who sings the delightful “I Can Do That,” and Abigail Sanford (Val) who teasingly belts the provocative “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.”   Kudos also to Scott Sumerak (Zach) and Nic Rhew (Larry), the entire cast for their vocal blending and fine solo work, as well as Orchestra Director David Robinson and his finely tuned orchestra and the lighting and scenic designs of Cheri Prough DeVol, as well as Christopher Case Carter’s choreography, which nicely duplicated and enhanced Michael Bennett’s original dance movements.     The only technical flaw was the poorly balanced sound system of the Senney Theater which continually makes it difficult to hear performers placed extreme stage right and left.   Capsule judgement:  The Beck show is a fine example of what happens when a fine script is staged by a talented director/choreographer, who has the fortune of finding a well-trained and talented cast.  The enthusiastic audience left on an emotional high, humming and singing one of the many memorable songs of the score, realizing that there are those in the world of theater who constantly illustrate, “What I Did for Love!”     A CHORUS LINE runs through August 10, 2025.  For tickets go to beckcenter.org or call 216-521-2540.