Inquiry Aims and Objectives

I told the people that I have arranged to interview that I would send them something which outlined my inquiry. Letting them know what exactly I was investigating and to what end. This proved to be harder than I thought but this morning I finally got something down on paper. No doubt this will change with things being added and subtracted but I feel that it is a start. I'd love to know anyone's thoughts.

Title (working):

An Investigation into how the training of vocational musical theatre students prepares them for the demands of the profession. Do you maximise a performers chance of career success by training them to be as versatile as possible or by allowing them to specialise in a particular area of musical theatre?

 Aims:

• To discover how musical theatre students are currently being trained on a range of London musical theatre courses, looking at the reasons behind the training methods.
• To uncover the student perspective. What are their opinions on their training and the direction in which it is taking them?
• To look at the demands made on professional performers in the musical theatre industry, and ascertain how their training has impacted their careers in either positive or negative ways
• To look at the views of musical theatre casting professionals (director/producer/casting director), shedding light on how they approach the casting process and what they look for in prospective cast members.

 Objectives:

• To improve my understanding of the way musical theatre students are currently trained on some of the top London courses and in turn make myself a better teacher.
• To improve my understanding of the demands made of professional performers in today’s musical theatre industry. By understanding what is being asked of performers I hope to be able to better prepare my students to attain these attributes.
• To improve my understanding of the casting process and of what is really important to the people who give the jobs.
• To come to a better understanding of the musical theatre industry as a whole. Linking all the strands of evidence to create a clearer picture of how to best prepare someone in training for their future career.
• To share my findings (in a controlled way, maintaining participant anonymity) with any person or institution within the industry also wishing to widen their knowledge.

Interview Questions

Procrastination is my life's curse. I think too much and do too little. It is however time to wake up and do some work!

My inquiry looks at the training of musical theatre students, focusing on what is the best way to ensure they have successful careers. Perhaps 'ensure' is the wrong word because in the performing industry there are no guarantees. Rather, is there a way of training musical theatre students that gives them the best possible chance of career success? And if so what is it? Versatility is often quoted as being the most important thing but is it in fact more advantages to be specialised in a particular area?

There is no current consensus on training methods and so as part of my inquiry I will be interviewing the head teachers of four professional musical theatre courses in London to gather and compare differing view points. I've arranged the interview dates and they are fast approaching which leaves me with the dilemma of what to actually ask them. Below is a list of questions that I think will help begin to illuminate my inquiry. If any of you have a chance could you please have a look at them and let me know if they are clear and relevant? Also let me know if you think there are any glaringly obvious things that I haven't asked.

• Assuming that I know nothing about musical theatre, what would you say was the purpose of this course?
• How do you go about achieving those goals?
• What skills do you think it is important for a graduate to leave with?
• Can you specifically describe to me the content of this course? (How much dance/singing/acting etc.)
• I've noticed that some musical theatre courses are accredited by the national dance council and others by the national drama council. Do you think that the accreditation of this course reveals its primary focus?
• Do you think that all musical theatre courses are designed to do the same thing?
• Did you decide on the content of this course? If so, how did you make these decisions and why? If not, how do you feel about the content? Do you think anything should be changed? If so, why?
• What do you look for when accepting students onto this course?
• Do you think you accept a certain type of performer? If so, what is that type?
• When training do you push students to excel at their strengths or to improve their weaknesses?
• Is it the same for every student? 
• Do you have to adapt this course to the changing demands of the industry?
• Do you think the industry has changed/ is changing?
• What do you think is now required from a professional performer?
• Is there an ideal of what a professional musical theatre performer should be? If so, what do you think that is?
• Is versatility important? If so, why?
• What are your feelings about the phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none'?
• In your experience are there many performers who are equally talented in all disciplines?
• If someone can't do one of the three disciplines, or even two of the three, does that me they can't or shouldn't do musical theatre?

I think there are probably lots more things I should be asking, particularly specifics about the teaching (any teachers out there please feel free to comment), but I suppose this is a start. Thanks in advance for commenting. I hope everyone is well and is getting back into it. Only one term left, arghhhhhhhhh! 

Critical Reflection and Summary: Digital Portfolio

At the beginning of term I had very little idea about what a professional inquiry was let alone what I might actually investigate, how I might go about it and how I would ensure that it was ethically sound. Thankfully by engaging in the various tasks of the module I am now able to answer these questions and look back at the evolution of my ideas. 


I have discovered that my professional inquiry will be a way for me to increase my understanding of my profession with the hope of opening new doors and moving forward. I have also become aware of the problems that may face someone doing an insider inquiry (Appendix A).


My interest and profession revolve around musical theatre so I knew my inquiry would be related to this. I therefore started a Musical Theatre SIG on the BAPP Facebook page to see if others shared my interest (Appendix B), inviting people to join through a blog entry (Appendix C). Many interesting discussions occurred regarding perception and performance ability, some of which are outlined in my blog (Appendix D).


I also joined several other SIGs that complemented my own interests such as Dance and Drama in Education (Appendix E), Education and Training, Was it Appropriate For Your Career? (Appendix F) and Jack of All Trades... And Master of None (Appendix G). The creation of the SIGs has enabled my ideas to evolve through discussion with my peers. For example, the conversations I have been having with Rebecca Jane Gaskell both on her blog (Appendix H) and my blog (Appendix I). The SIGs didn't come without their problems however, although I found it difficult to change anything (Appendix J).


I initially thought my inquiry would be based on the perception of musical theatre but after meeting with professional peers to discuss my questions (Appendix K) and thinking over comments from BAPP students (for example, Stephanie Thomas' comments (Appendix L)) it soon became apparent that I was more interested in investigating the way musical theatre students are trained. It now seems the perfect inquiry as it marries my love of musical theatre with my desire to move into the vocational training of other performers.


Given that my inquiry would now be about musical theatre training and that my prior knowledge of ethics was relatively small (Appendix M) it seemed appropriate to look into the code of ethics for both performers (Appendix N) and teachers (Appendix O). This investigation of ethics coupled with information from the reader enabled me to make decisions about what ethical standards I would ensure were in place for my inquiry (Appendix P).


I began researching musical theatre generally, thinking about which performances I admire (Appendix Q) and what types of musical theatre there are (Appendix R). I also investigated opinions on how musical theatre students should be trained (Appendix S) as well as the training actually available (Appendix T). I have used Delicious as a way of bookmarking and sharing my electronic resources (Appendix U) (as well as looking at the resources of other members of my SIG (Appendix V)) and I have used the BAPP references wiki to share other important, non-electronic literature (Appendix W).


This accumulation of resources however wasn't enough to inform my thoughts and ideas. It was only through critical analysis of the literature, three of which are posted on my blog (Appendix X, Appendix Y and Appendix Z), that I really began to understand the professional landscape in which my inquiry will take place.


The final challenge was working out how to obtain the necessary information needed to increase my understanding and draw conclusions. I carried out a pilot observation (Appendix 1), survey (Appendix 2), interview (Appendix 3) and focus group (Appendix 4), some with more success than others. The failures didn't matter however because all the pilots gave me insight into exactly what I wanted to find out and into what would be the best way to obtain the information needed. 

This term has brought me to a place where I am now excited and confident to ethically conduct a professional inquiry that will not only benefit my understanding but will hopefully also contribute to the industry as a whole.

Interview

A couple of weeks ago I conducted a pilot interview with one of my professional peers. I initially tried to conduct this over the phone and because it is not possible to record on my phone I made notes on the interview. This proved to be an extremely difficult process and the information I collected ended up being paraphrased and sketchy. I also felt that not being able to see the person limited my appreciation of the nuances of their responses. I therefore decided to conduct the interview again in person.

The second time around I recorded the whole interview so that I could transcribe it and revisit it whenever I wanted. I did still makes notes however in case something went wrong with the recording. I also tried to create what Judith Bell describes as a 'draft schedule'. This is where I had a sequence of numbers for each question that signified a range of responses. I would circle which number was closest to the answer of the interviewee.

This process gave me an indication of the area in which the interviewees thoughts lay but I think because of my inexperience the sound recording was much more useful because it gave the detail. During future interviews I will always try to record the process because it makes analysis much easier and more accurate (there is no risk of paraphrasing to suit you purpose). I must admit though that I hadn't realised how time consuming transcribing would be. I found my transcript vital but I am slow at typing so in future I need to set aside at least five hours to transcribe a one hour interview.

I decided to make my interview semi-structured, again at the advice of Judith Bell. She writes,

The advantage of a focused interview is that a framework is established beforehand and so recording and analysis are greatly simplified. This is important for any research, but particularly so for limited-time studies (2005).

I didn't want to make my interview completely structured as I felt I needed the possibility of following where the interviewee might lead. I also didn't want to make my interview completely unstructured as I am constantly aware of my limited time scale and knew that there was certain information I needed to collect in a certain amount of time.

I think ultimately this proved the best idea because it meant I could decide what information I needed before the interview started and make sure I had it before the interview ended. It also meant that a couple of times I could ask spontaneous questions that gave me information and insight on an area that I hadn't previously considered.

I spent along time before the interview preparing my questions in much the same way as I did for my survey. Generally I tried to use open ended questions that would encourage the interviewee to give expansive, explanatory responses rather than one word answers.

Even after this careful preparation there were however times when the interviewee asked what I meant by a particular question. I think this proved to be one of the positive aspects of the interview process. I was able to clarify and explain what I meant so that the interviewee answered the question I thought I was asking. If I had been conducting other interviews this would also have been useful because I could have ensured all participants understood the question in the same way.

I did however find a problem with explaining what I meant by a particular question. I occasionally found myself saying, "The reason I'm asking 'A' is because I want to know if 'B' or 'C' happens." I think my clarification sometimes lead the interviewee to give an answer they may not have given without prompting. Now I am aware of this I will try not to do it in future.

The interview itself was very illuminating. I used it specifically to discover my professional peer's experience of their vocational training, what has been required of them in their profession, and how they think their training has impacted this.

One of the interesting discoveries was that even though the interviewee trained on a musical theatre course, the course itself was very much taught from an acting perspective and this was the reason for their choice.

By going to 'School A' I knew I was going somewhere more weighted in acting, so it wasn't really a surprise that the majority of classes included voice, voice and text, playtext, acting theory, stage combat and neutral mask. Things like the voice and playtext classes would have about three classes timetabled in the week compared to maybe one or two of each style of dance.

It was also interesting that the interviewee believes they are an actor who just happens to work in musical theatre and that the majority of work they have done has been in character driven shows such as Les Miserables and Woman in White.

The interviewee still believes in the importance of versatility however,

I think it is vital to be versatile, especially given the competition and lack of work within the industry. I think it is important to know you strengths but in order to be open to the maximum amount of work I think you need to be versatile.

The analysis of interviews is difficult and I intend do a lot of reading over the next few months on how to effectively draw conclusions from the qualitative statements of expert individuals. Regarding this interview, I found it difficult to draw extensive conclusions because I had nothing to compare it to. It sits as a lone opinion. Judith Bell writes, 'So, we must be wise and vigilant, critical of out interpretation of the data, regularly question our practice and wherever possible triangulate' (2005).

For my professional inquiry I intend to use interviews as the primary data collection tool because I think they uncover such depth of information. They don't just tell what happens but give you the reasons why as well. I am however going to make sure I select a wide enough range of people to give a rounded view of the questions being asked so as to eliminate any possible bias.

Literature Review 3

I will be reviewing the Foreword of the book Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course. This is written by Lynn Ahrens the Tony Award winning writer and lyricist whose musicals include Lucky Stiff, Once On This Island, and Ragtime.

Ahrens argues that musicals are by there very nature contradictory. They make comment on real life just as any piece of theatre does but they also contain elements of sheer fantasy where the audience are expected to believe that people just 'burst into song.' She believes it is the role of the writer to make this 'fantastical world ring true' but she also believes it is the responsibility of the actor.

She describes acting as an 'extremely difficult discipline' but believes that a 'performer' has the even more difficult task of acting 'within the strictures of rhythm and rhyme and melody.' An interesting perspective as I believe a musical is generally thought to require less acting skill than a play, not more.

Ahrens talks about the importance of music in a show but continually returns to the idea that it is the acting that makes musicals work. It is the acting that enables the audience to believe in what they are seeing and to become emotionally involved in the world of the musical. She writes, 'The song is simply a heightened extension of the dialogue and if we - actors and writers - make the transitions appear seamless and natural, it helps to convince the audience that what they are seeing is real life.'

Perhaps feeling the need to substantiate her beliefs Ahrens uses the cast of her current show The Glorious Ones as an example of what she means. She says the cast is a mix of seasoned musical theatre professionals and actors who are more normally seen in plays. Some have big voices and others workable voices. Some have natural dancing talent and the others are movers. In spite of these differences what the entire cast has the ability to do is to act the song and it is for this reason they were cast and the show works.

It is not surprising that Ahrens champions acting in musical theatre. After all the foreword is for a book that's purpose is to explain and develop the skills needed to act well in musical theatre. If her foreword said acting in musicals was pointless then nobody would bother to read the rest of the book, and I imagine the writers would have something to say about that.

Also she is a lyricist and writer so her preoccupation is bound to be with words and stories. I wonder whether the composer of her musicals is equally fond of an actor with a 'workable' voice singing his songs.

Ahrens paints a very positive picture of musical theatre and asserts that to do it well is immensely difficult. As somebody who works in musical theatre and as somebody who is writing in a book designed for musical theatre students and teachers she has an obvious bias. I imagine a playwright for 'straight' theatre may perhaps comment that most plays contain much more substance than most musicals and therefore the acting skill required for a play is much greater than that required for a musical.

In spite of her bias I think Ahrens view on the importance of acting in musicals is really interesting because, as I have mentioned before, a lot of my favourite musical theatre performances have come from 'straight' actors. These actors don't always have the best singing voices or dancing ability but they are always immersed in their characters. It is their ability to make me believe in the world of the musical that captures my imagination and makes the performance memorable.

Perhaps these 'straight' actors approach the rehearsal process in a different way to musical theatre 'performers'. They are used to working with text and character so that is where their focus lies. Whatever the cause in my opinion, and Aherns opinion, it is musical theatre approached from the acting perspective that is most successful.

As part of my inquiry I am extremely interested in seeing whether other professionals have the same opinion. Should we be focusing more of our attention on developing the acting skill of our musical theatre students?


Ahrens, L. 2008, 'Foreword', in J. Deer and R. Dal Vera Acting in musical theatre: a comprehensive course. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Observation

Yesterday I carried out my pilot investigation. The reason I waited so long was because I wanted to do an observation of a class but needed to wait for the holidays to end first. The class I chose was a musical theatre performance class which involves a group of students rehearsing a musical theatre number from a show to performance level.

I decided I would need to make my observation a simple and structured one because I only had the opportunity to watch one class and therefore didn't have the luxury of waiting for meaning to evolve over time. I therefore started by working out exactly what it was that I wanted to know and concluded that as my interest lies in the balance of musical theatre curriculum I would like to know if emphasis was given to a particular discipline within the class.

I would firstly record how often the teacher gave dance notes, how often they gave singing notes, and how often they gave acting notes. I would also record how often the students asked questions about choreography, how often they asked questions about vocals, and how often they asked questions about characterisation. I hoped that at the end I would have some data that showed whether the class was being taught with a bias towards a particular discipline and whether this rubbed off on the questions asked by the students.

I created two simple grids, one for the teacher and one for the students (I originally thought about doing a grid for each of the students but I didn't know the class well and thought I may get confused with names. I also thought that my interest was more about the bias of the class as a whole so recording individual students wouldn't add much insight at this stage), and each was split into three sections (one for dance, one for singing and one for acting). Every time one of the disciplines was mentioned by teacher or students a mark would be made on the correct box on the grid.

The recording of the data proved to be fairly easy because I was listening out for very specific things and a rehearsal environment is one that I am used to. I am glad I decided on a structured approach because it enabled me to stay focused for the entire class, stopping my attention wandering to more interesting things.

It had been a concern of mine that my presence in the classroom would be a distraction to the students or that perhaps they might change their behaviour. This however didn't seem to be the case. The class is a very involved and busy one so perhaps they just didn't have the time to worry about me. I spoke to the teacher afterwards and he said that they behaved as they always do.

Another thing that particularly worried me was that the teacher, knowing that I was looking at how often each discipline was mentioned, would consciously make more effort to talk about all three so as to seem 'better'. I therefore decided to only give the teacher an overview of my aims rather than the exact specifics of what I was recording. I concluded that this was still ethically sound as the teacher consented and was given the reasons why he wasn't being informed more deeply. I also let him know that he could look at the results after as it might be useful to him.

My real problems came when analysing the results. Looking at my final grid for the teacher it showed that he gave notes on choreography 33 times during the class, he gave acting notes 8 times, and he gave singing notes only twice. The final grid for the students showed that they asked 15 questions about choreography, 2 about characterisation, and 0 about the vocals of the piece.

From the data it looks clear that there is a strong bias towards dance in this musical theatre class but I am unsure if in reality this is true. I remember the first things the teacher spoke to the students about was the importance of characterisation in this particular number, and almost every time he mentioned it he stressed that it was the most important thing. So if it is the most important thing why did he give more notes on the dance and why were more questions asked about the dance? This could be down to a number of reasons. It was early in the rehearsal process and steps were still being learnt so dance was at that point the focus. You have to know the steps before you can layer it with character. It could be that getting everyone to physically do the same thing takes more verbal correction than getting people to discover their character. It could also be that the acting and singing were already at a very high standard because of previous work and now it is the dance that needs to be improved.

Perhaps if I had been able to watch the class over a whole term and seen the process from start to finish then the data I gathered would be more fairly representative of what was going on. I must admit that I didn't find observation to be the most reliable of tools. It is probably due to my inexperience and the amount of time I have to spend on it but I think that the results I got were too open to interpretation. Observation is supposed to be about looking at what actually happens rather than what people say happens which I think is valuable. In reality however discovering what happens doesn't help you discover why it happens so the results are still very open to interpretation.

Survey

A few weeks ago I carried out a survey entitled 'The Effectiveness Of Your Training' and this blog aims to analyse the effectiveness of that survey.

When I created the survey my intention was to discover how well people felt their training had prepared them for their career and particularly what aspects they felt were most beneficial or lacking. I also wanted to investigate what people saw as important measures of success.

I initially posted my survey (created using Survey Monkey) on my blog and I got a reasonable response of about ten people from the BAPP course but I felt I wanted more people involved so I decided to also post the survey onto Facebook. I didn't ask anyone specifically to fill in the survey I just left it on my wall but the response number significantly increased to thirty four by the end of the survey period. I would definitely use Facebook again as a way of getting any future surveys to the maximum number of people. It would be possible to use contacts on Facebook to post the survey on their walls too so that people beyond your direct network could respond. Obviously the more people that respond to the survey the more relevant and accurate the information becomes. I understand the argument that this rules out anyone who doesn't have a Facebook account or a computer but I still feel I would be able to get enough of a cross section of the populations that I am interested in to make the method worthwhile and fair.

I would also use Survey Monkey to create any future survey because I felt it was easy to use and the graphs it creates are really useful in giving a visual overview of particular trends of thought. I would however consider paying the fee to create a survey that was slightly longer as I felt restricted by the limit of ten questions.

When I first created my survey I was aware of the ten question limit and tried particularly hard to only include questions that I thought would help me find out what I wanted to know. After looking at my results however I still created several questions that were completely pointless. The question 'Where did you train?', although interesting, gave me no specifically useful information. Also the question 'Are you currently working or have you ever work in the field you trained in?' was not useful. 97.1% (33) of respondents were working or had at some point worked in their chosen field so from this I could read that the training of most people was successful because it enabled them to work. The question however gave no insight into the type, length or regularity of work.

There is one other question that I would not ask again an that is the name of the respondents. Carly Osbourne and Ellie Sykes both commented that they thought respondents were more likely to be honest and forthcoming with their answers if they were anonymous. I absolutely agree with them. I think for the pilot survey it was fine to ask for names because we are comfortable with each other and it gave me the opportunity to follow up any queries I had. If I were doing a larger survey in future involving people who I did not know and who did not know me I would give up the chance of being able to follow up for the increased possibility of truthful responses.

Something interesting that emerged from the survey is that 64.7% (22) of respondents were only partially happy with the training they received and 2.9% (1) not at all happy. This has made me keen to continue with my inquiry into vocational training to see what it is that performers feel they actually need that they are not currently getting. Again, however, I feel I could have worded this question better. I asked, 'How well do you feel your vocational training prepared you for your chosen career: Not at all, Partially, Completely?' 32.4% (11) of respondents said they were completely happy with their training but when asked if they felt if anything could have done anything to prepare them better they all gave an answer. This made me think that perhaps they were not 'completely' happy meaning I should have given them a different option, such as 'very well'.

When asked what they felt (if anything) their college could have done to prepare them better 17.6 % (6) of respondents thought that audition technique could have been improved, 17.6% (6) of respondents felt that more information on self-employed business issues (i.e. tax and marketing) should have been given, and 20.6% (7) felt that the acting training could have been improved. These insights have made me want to ask specific questions around these particular issues.

When asked what aspect of their course (if anything) they felt was vital for their training 35.3% (12) thought that the discipline of the course was vital.

When asked to rate the importance of certain factors in determining how successful a performer is, quality of work and happiness came out marginally higher as the most important factors. If I were to ask this question again I would ask the respondents to rate them in order of importance. I think this would give a much clearer indication of what people think is the most important factor in determining success.

With regards to my pilot survey one of the things I found most beneficial was the mix of quantitative and qualitative information. It was useful to ask a quantitative question and then give people room to expand their answer, enabling me to find out why they thought certain things. Any survey I do in the future will definitely contain a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions.

I found the survey process really interesting and will be using it in my actual inquiry because it is a way of getting information quickly from a large pool of people. However, this piloting process has made me appreciate the importance of getting the questions right. They need to be clear (making sure they mean the same thing to everybody) and specific (making sure they are aimed at collecting the information you actually want to collect). The next time I carry out a survey I will spend much longer on working out exactly what it is that I want to know.