Prima la musica: developing a quadruple-threat pedagogy for the musician-actor

Musical theatre musicians have been incorporated as stage performers since the 1970s, with key directors, choreographers, and theatre venues establishing a new hybrid genre since the 1990s that integrates musicianship and choreo-scenographic use of instruments as driving elements of not only the performance but also the creation of new and adapted musicals. As a consequence, the “actor-musician” has emerged as a new category of multi-talent, joining the industry-standard category of the “triple threat” actor-singer-dancer and spurring the development of several dedicated conservatoire courses in the UK. Following the historical model of opera and of 20th century mainstream musical theatre, though, acting and singing are still seen as the two fundamental musical theatre skills (with dancing as an ideal third), and leading roles for “quadruple threats” remain few. Accordingly, current pedagogical approaches are largely geared toward broadening the skills of actor-singers by integrating drama-focused musicianship and engagement with the theatrical affordances of instruments into their skill set. But what might change for the performer and the industry if musicianship, rather than acting and singing, were placed centre stage in a 21st century musical theatre pedagogy? This presentation evaluates the practices that inhere in the training and work of musicians, which are already being tapped by directors, music directors, and choreographers in the new hybrid genre (Harrison 2016), as well as the often tacit abilities developed by musicians through their specific engagements with instruments, ensemble, and improvisational practices (Sudnow 2001, De Souza 2016, Love 2017), to consider how a musician-centred musical theatre pedagogy informed by theories of embodied cognition might optimally facilitate the transferral of musicians’ skills to the three other “threat” techniques, and in turn influence the developing genre hybridity of musical theatre.