Musical Theatre Training: The Shedd Institute is known for mounting top quality classic musical theater productions. Now we have brought on the multi-talented Vicki Brabham as our Musical Theater Department Coordinator to flesh out a suite of classes and camps to support build the skills of our future “triple threat” actors, singers and dancers.

This Fall we’ve redesigned three Saturday classes that will provide the range of introductory to advanced musical theater skills to add to their singing and dancing class learning as students grow up. The content will change each term, so students can participate for 1, 2, or all 3 terms.

Junior Vaudeville provides an introduction for the elementary set to just get youngsters comfortable with being on a stage and to see what aspect of this rich performance life they might be interested in. We’ll cover everything from joke-telling, group songs, some juggling, stage directions, etc., so that in later years they are at least more comfortable with public speaking, joining an amateur theater company, or working backstage. The class will join the middle school class for the second hour to work on a shared end of term performance.

Stagecraft for middle schoolers welcomes both beginners and more experienced students and will have a different performance theme and music each term. The final performance will include the Junior Vaudeville students to emulate how an amateur production is put together.

Musical Theatre Training Academy: builds on our intensive Musical Theatre Training Academy summer camp to develop and complement the skills that students are working on in their high school performance classes. Each term students will work with faculty from different disciplines to mount a performance in the traditional revue format. Themes will range from great composer/lyricist teams, to subject matter, to historical eras.

Break a leg!! And have some Saturday fun!