![]() ![]() ![]() “A lot of theater people don’t think what we do is real acting,” says Wagner, “and a lot of musicians think we’re not doing real singing.”īut nothing succeeds like success, and the “News of Graduates” in the department’s current bulletin underlines just how successful the program has been at launching Broadway careers. “Broad exposure develops your imagination and capacity as an artist.”īut winning respect in the academy for musical theater has been an uphill climb. “It’s a university education, as well as a BFA,” Wagner says. Once in, Wagner’s students still have to take a full slate of academic courses, on top of intensives in singing, dancing and acting. And he did.”Īdmission to the program is blisteringly competitive - last year, 1,000 kids applied for the 20 freshman slots. ![]() “It was that certainty that convinced me this guy knew what he was doing. “He was very specific and uncompromising in his views,” Boylan recalls. In 1984, Paul Boylan - dean of what at the time was just the UM School of Music - called to ask if he’d like to come flesh out a brand new program.īoylan, now dean emeritus, was impressed with Wagner’s “encyclopedic” knowledge of musical theater and the man’s academic instincts. He landed at Syracuse University, and discovered to his surprise that he loved teaching. He needed money before moving to Manhattan, so he wrote 50 colleges to see if they’d like a class in musical theater. And I didn’t understand that they would do the exact same show the next night.”Īt Indiana University, Wagner majored in music and theater, dabbled in journalism, and decided to become a Broadway rehearsal pianist. “I didn’t understand how the actors learned all those lines. “I was so naive,” Wagner says, chatting in his small office stuffed with files, books and movie posters. Growing up in Moscow, Idaho, he only saw two productions - “Guys and Dolls” and “South Pacific” - before college. You might think anyone with his job must have been a theater nut as a kid, but you’d be wrong. “There’s no field that doesn’t value that.” “This field is all about understanding people through the use of character, and using your imagination to interpret the world,” he says. It gets to the heart of Wagner’s conviction that a degree in musical theater is applicable not just to singing and dancing on Broadway, but almost any career. ![]()
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