Is The Art Of Acting Different In Musicals Or Plays?

I am a firm believer any student of acting needs to be as versatile in as many performance techniques as possible. I believe all actors would say they have preferences when it comes to styles or genres of scripts, nevertheless, when starting out or possibly even deep into an actor’s career they must be flexible to perform as cast: Not only to pay the bills, but to grow as a performer. In Acting in Musicals, Mr. Jory attempts to answer an often debated question “Is the art of acting different in musicals and plays?” This is a very important subject for acting teachers; should we as professionals leave out a large lucrative portion of the professional acting roles simply because we prefer straight plays over musicals or worse don’t have
The author is quick to give a “However” paragraph, explaining how musicals are often performed in larger houses. As a rule, I would say yes, but I have performed musicals in smaller than 100 seats, and non-musicals in over 1500 seat venues. I would say his point for needing to act larger in larger venues is a wash. I do agree though that we are too eager to mic our student performers, it really is a disservice to mic them rather than teach them to
In a musical everything has to be, as he states it “bigger than life” if you are a comedic character you have to be funnier faster, whatever “type” you are, choices you make toward character has to be gotten across much faster. An actor does not have hours of dialogue to create a connection with an audience, the connection has to be made quickly; some main roles might have a tiny number of lines and one song to create the mood of the role. The Governor from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas comes to mind. One scene, one song and maybe fifteen lines, that isn’t a lot of time for character development, but if you have seen the show and the part was played well you get a strong indication of the character and remember the song, it is a catchy tune after all. In closing; as a theatre teacher, I feel it our job to give our students as large a foundation as possible to continue a career. The bricks of storytelling are the same between a straight play and a musical, however as Mr. Jory puts it the actor that will flourish in this larger than life environment has a personality that is hard to teach in school, they will be able to occupy the larger scale of everything musical easier than