Training for Writers and Performers

Abstract

The widespread growth of Broadway and West End musicals, especially after World War II, has produced a global market in need of industry-ready performers and writers, resulting in a rapid growth in, and demand for, writing and performance training. This chapter offers a global snapshot of the worldwide schooling in the musical craft whose legacy undoubtedly owes much to Broadway and the West End. In writing, the innovations in the musical art form which led to closer-crafted dramaturgies mirror the systematic development of collaborative creativity among the component arts. In performance training, integrative practice which aspires toward a versatile and seamless fusion of singing, acting, and dancing (ubiquitously trademarked as the ‘triple threat’), emerges alongside the rise of the choreographer-director. In both cases, a creative tension exists between global socio-economics and local culture, played out as both an appropriation of and resistance to the transmitted principles of Broadway- or West End-style musicals, inasmuch as foreign markets may develop the next Filipina Kim or Chinese Cats for the ‘megamusical’ trade whilst fostering an indigenous (‘glocal’) talent base for their own burgeoning markets. A summary of the global status quo considers the vexed challenges of vocational training in context of integration, industry-facing aims, and current social issues.