SMTC Success!
29 July 2020
Written By: TJ Taylor
120 students registered their interest, 40 audition submissions, 24 phenomenally talented young perfumers were selected & 1 of a kind programme!
Over two weeks in July 2020, 24 students aged 7-18 were selected by audition and put through their paces in a challenging drama school style curriculum learning advanced singing, dancing and acting skills from our top team of musical theatre teachers. Each day students went from class to class working intensely in their different musical theatre specialisms.
Dance
Our head of dance for SMTC Greg Sim has just returned from his training in the USA and provided students with detailed training in Ballet and Jazz each day. Students were challenged to push their technical abilities and with daily technique sessions made great progress throughout the course. Alongside this each day the students got to work with all our faculty members as they presented musical theatre routines from their professional repertoires to challenge the students to pick up choreography quickly. The students worked on routines from shows such as Mary Poppins, A Chorus Line, Grease and Heathers.
Acting
In acting students were taught techniques from some of acting’s great practitioners including Stanislavski, Meisner and Strasberg. Mina Kaye guided students through intense acting exercises getting them to access deeper emotions and techniques. Students were also assigned scene studies to present for assessment at the end of the two weeks. They worked with their partners on challenging scenes from musical theatre and applied all their new knowledge learned in their technique classes.
Singing
Due to the Covid 19 regulations singing was not allowed in person at the workshop, but this did not stop our students from learning & practicing their singing. TJ & Vanessa designed an innovative singing training programme through zoom that allowed the students to learn vocal techniques alongside learning more about musical theatre history and important composers. Students were challenged to work across a range of musical theatre genres having to quickly learn new songs to present back in assessments every two days. Towards the end of the second week students then presented all their assigned songs to our industry panel for assessment & feedback.
Wider Skills
Alongside the triple threat skills students had sessions on developing their C.V.’s, audition skills and musical theatre history. It is important for new performers to learn this extra skills early to start preparing for the theatre business and not just the performing skills. Students had to design their own C.V.’s and present them on the final day in the audition.
Assessments
Instead of having a final showcase as most theatre camps would show, students were assigned a series of assessments in-front of our teaching panel in all of their major skill areas. This forced them to think technically and concisely and focus their experience on training and not presenting a show. This mindset created an excellent working environment for all where students and staff were working to the same goal of challenging each other to develop stronger triple threat skills. On the final day students got a change to piece together all their learning in an audition that simulated a professional audition that they could experience for their age group. The students were told to prepare everything independently and all achieved great progress from the start of the course.
Response
We have had a great response from students, parents and staff for this course with all students feeling inspired to achieve greater levels of detail in their performing work in the future. Parents have commented how engaged the students were throughout the two weeks and how they were excited to share the knowledge they had gained in the day and spend time preparing the homework given every night for the next sessions. As a teaching faculty, the teachers were so inspired by the level of commitment from the students and the faculty enjoyed the experience just as much as the students.
Future
We cannot wait to present SMTC again in the future and we hope to place the course at a time where more students from a Varity of schools and ages can attend in their school breaks. We are also looking at adapting the program for the many adults whom have expressed interest in attending the course too. SMTC is an exciting addition to the Sing’theatre Academy offerings and we cannot wait to bring it back in the very near future!
