by Dorothy Pitti
Musical Theater College Auditions- or MTCA- is helping students tackle the ultra-draining and competitive college audition process…
Just as students going through the traditional college application process take preparatory classes to boost their SAT scores, hopeful theater students, too, turn to specialized coaching services to help them nail their all-important auditions. Unlike most acting workshops, Musical Theater College Auditions, aka MTCA, is a unique program designed specifically to guide prospective theater and acting students through the entire college application process. Like some of the country’s most competitive Ivy League schools, acceptance rates for top musical theater and acting programs in the United States are extremely intimidating. “Some schools accept less than 1% of applicants- and a huge part of that-if not entirely, is based on the audition” said Ellen Lettrich, founder of MTCA and voice health specialist.
Lettrich has been a voice specialist, performer and educator for over 25 years. After getting her teaching certificate from Villanova University, she began her work in educational theatre as a teacher and director and continued to perform. She found herself spending a lot of time connecting her theater students with the working theater professionals that she had either previously taught, or met through performing. “Throughout all the years I spent coordinating classroom curricula, productions, workshops, etc., one thing that was so apparent was how effective it was to have students learn and hear from actual theater professionals. Professionals bringing their own experiences and expertise to young artists is powerful, especially when it comes to audition prep.” Thus, slowly but surely, MTCA started to form.
Today, MTCA is comprised of over 50 coaches in both New York and LA. All coaches are working actors with extensive training and experience in either acting or musical theater. “Most, if not all, are internal referrals” says Lettrich. Many of MTCA’s coaches are former students of Lettrich, while others have been plucked from the crowd based on showcase performances or personality. In the past and now, Lettrich looks for specific qualities in coaches. “We look for people who are very warm, very smart, and secure enough in their careers where they won’t have to travel a lot.” Although the program is designed so that coaches may work professionally while teaching, MTCA still looks to provide as much consistency and a sense of “comfort” as possible.
As spring is in the air and summer quickly approaches, the team at MTCA is gearing up for another busy season. With all of the pressure, decision-making and work that goes into applying to college, students are willing to put their money, (or their parents’ money), where the well-rounded help is. MTCA student Sophie Rundhaug explains “I have been training for probably over 7 or 8 years now- taking different acting, theater and dance classes. The thing that I like about MTCA is, they train you specifically for college auditions, and also helped me figure out which schools would meet my needs.”
MTCA offers one-on-one lessons with field professionals at a rate of $100 per session, with the number of monthly sessions varying based on the individual needs and wishes of each student. Typically, students will schedule lessons with MTCA throughout the course of about 6 months to a year. MTCA Students may choose a monologue coach, a song coach, a vocal health coach, a dance coach, or any combination of the four. “Typically most theater students need to prepare 2-3 contrasting monologues for college auditions- some require a classical piece, like Shakespeare,” explains Assistant Direction and MTCA monologue coach Charlie Murphy. A Shakespeare expert, having acted in numerous Shakespeare productions, including NYCs Shakespeare in the Park, Murphy takes great satisfaction in helping students connect with the dated pieces. “There’s something so special about seeing that ‘light’ turn on in a student’s face when they realize ‘Oh, this makes so much sense- and Shakespeare said it better than I could have.” Murphy himself went through the treacherous college audition process and was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University for acting- a school whose acceptance rate into the School of Drama is 3%. MTCA also offers college advising sessions for the purpose of helping students organize and narrow their college to-do lists. Services include college advising, headshots, pre-screen audition recordings and more.
Aside from one-on-one lessons, students also get the benefit of attending “Mock Auditions,” which are basically staged, fake auditions that give students a realistic sense of what auditions will be like. The mock auditions are run by staff, and each student has the benefit of “auditioning” in front of other coaches and peers, and receive feedback from a variety of theater professionals.
MTCA boasted a statistic of 95% of their students being accepted into audition-based programs in the year 2016, and are currently working to find new ways to analyze acceptance trends and statistics in the coming year in order give students the best guidance possible.