Teaching creativity within musical theatre: ‘a star is born’ 8 times a week

The performer in musical theatre will be required to sing eight performances weekly. For this to be managed effectively there is a need for them to understand creativity and how to produce performances that are meaningful and expressive night after night. Commercial pressure, first cast recordings and copyright legislation constantly require artists to preserve ‘original’ (first performance) details from a professional production and so performers and understudies are often required to give exact performances in every detail of gesture, score, lyric, notation and narrative journey [Engels 2006, p.357]. \ud \ud The problem is how are we to manage this within the training of the performer and to consider the idea of understanding energy and creativity within the craft [Stanislavsky 2013, p.171]. There is a need for the industry to make specific demands on the performer but not at the loss of creativity! Creativity in the world of musical theatre performance must come in association with the ‘thinking’ and response to the directorial process, the performance of music (feeling) and text (the world of now) and by doing so enable the performer to give meaning to what they are doing. The creativity lies in reconciling these aspects so that they can ‘believe’ and be convincing. \ud \ud This journey from meaning to performance is the essential creative ingredient for the musical theatre performer to explore their performance philosophy and technique. This paper will identify how this creative process of moving from meaning to performance can be communicated effectively to enable the musical theatre performer to engage consistently in a creative manner with both the industry and the world of performance – the ‘now’ - and so have a fulfilled creative life within the world of musical theatre [Robinson, 2015 p.118]. \ud \ud Keywords: creativity, energy, industry, gesture, score, narrative journey, training, musical theatre, performanc