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[0:00] Charlie Murphy: Hello, hello, and welcome to Mapping The College Audition. I'm your host, Charlie Murphy, Director of MTCA. That's Musical Theatre College Auditions. Check us out at mtca.com. And today we've got Brant Russell from CCM Acting on the pod. For new listeners, another one of our College Deep Dive episodes where we explore the landscape of the college world and try to demystify this daunting audition process. And as I'll chat about on the pod, this is an Act III episode in some ways. It's our third time having CCM on the podcast, but also a new experience, an Act I experience on the podcast, because this is our first time talking about the CCM Acting program. Now, for our newer listeners, that could be confusing because you're going to say, hey, didn't I hear Rachel Stevens talking about acting and how acting is the focus of CCM Musical Theatre now in this new era?

And to those listeners, I would say that, yes, you are right. It can be confusing. Also, you're not that new of a listener if you already listen to Rachel Stevens. But as we'll get deeper into this episode, for some of these programs, the acting and musical theatre departments can be fully interlinked, like with my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, where everyone, meaning all the acting and musical theatre students, are taking all of the same core acting curriculum all together with the same professors in the same classes. And then the musical theatre students are getting additional supplemental dance and singing-focused classes. Alongside, often the actors are getting their own dance and singing training, just maybe at a less intensive level.

And then in these programs, there's often a very permeable membrane between the two majors. So if you're a really advanced dancer, you can often take advanced dance at those things, even if you're an actor. Same thing with voice lessons, those kind of things, right? You can be considered for both programs in a singular audition in a lot of these cases, and you're looked at like a big group of performers. One big group of performers, actors, and MTs in a whole within one department with shared resources. So the idea we talked about before, like Josh Gad being an acting major at Carnegie Mellon, despite ending up making a huge career in mostly musical theatre, this is Olaf in Frozen for those who don't know, right?

That really just comes down to a question of how much dance am I taking? But really I'm getting a lot of the same classes for him at Carnegie Mellon. Whereas in other programs, like we're going to talk about here with CCM, it can be completely separate departments, it can be separate auditions for admission, separate classes, sometimes completely separate shows. You know, there may be very little intermingling between majors in terms of even the shows they do, right? And you know, it can be that extreme of a difference of complete separation or no separation. And then as you'll hear on all these 300 episodes, if you keep listening, you're gonna hear about a bunch of different places with everything in between, where there's goes, it's a little intermingled, but we do try to give preference to the MTs and these kind of classes and these kind of shows, etc, etc. Okay, that was basically a takeaway before the episode.

But I do hope you enjoyed this interview with Brandt. I was able to speak with him both here, which was we filmed this a couple weeks ago, and then on a virtual panel as part of PUA. And it was really fun both times. For those of you out there in the MTCA world, I hope you're all crushing it with your pre-screened applications. Even our non-MTCA listeners, of course, I hope you're out there crushing it with pre-screened applications, just talking specifically events with some of our MTCA people. For any of those, if you still have stuff to turn in, that's no shame if you do. We're not going to shame here. Some of you already turned some stuff in. Some of you are still holding off, haven't maybe filmed those pre-screens yet.

I know for those who haven't sent them in, you're starting to receive positive results and starting to schedule auditions. This is a really full time of year, right? I always think October is a really hard time of year because you are sitting with all of the uncertainty of it all, right? And boy, I can tell you, I've understood that empathetically over the past 15 years, but really going through this process for the last couple of years, on our 18-month kindergarten journey, boy, did I understand how hard the uncertainty of like, what's it all going to be? Is it this? Is it this? Is it even private or public or what's it going to be, right? And I dare say many of you out there as listeners, you might even feel your college audition experience and those results are even more important than my kindergarten choice.

And I think you would be right. But all of which is to say, boy, I know both as a student having gone through this process and as a parent now starting to go through processes like it, it's hard. The uncertainty is very hard. I hope all of you have been crushing it. I know a lot of you have been crushing it with your mock auditions. We have in-person masterclasses that will, they're happening this weekend as they're recorded, but as you listen, it'll be last weekend. We're having online masterclasses with some great faculty that are layered throughout the fall. So I hope you're all enjoying and participating in those. And then also beginning, your early auditions are coming up, right? Including, I just want to talk a little bit about our private audition weekend in December.

I will just say there are only a few slots left for that private audition weekend. That's December 10th through 14th here in New York City. I do highly recommend it if it's in your budget to make it to New York and participate. Those are six schools where you don't need a pre-screen and the practice you get is really a bit of that pre-season we so often recommend, right? Where you get that experience of what it is going to be like sort of at a little mini Unifieds before the big Unifieds in New York, Chicago and Anaheim this year. It's really helpful, right? That's the number one bit of feedback. So the reason I'm passing it as the number one bit of feedback I've heard in our green rooms in New York, Chicago and LA is just that the people who were at those Unifieds were so glad specifically that they did our six school private audition weekend, right?

All early practice is great practice. I'm out there. You want to go to do an on-campus early audition. You want to do an early consortium. I think it's all great practice. But here at our private audition weekend, you do get six schools and six individual auditions in one weekend, which really that's what you really does mirror that mini version of what the national Unifieds and all those real auditions will be, right? You're getting individual auditions for individual schools. You're navigating the ups and downs energetically throughout the day, you know, from when I need to warm up, where do I need to cool down? And you're like literally going to be sitting in the same hallways and navigating the same things that you'll be navigating in your auditions come New York City Unifieds in January.

Anyway, so just to say a few spots left and if you haven't grabbed yours yet, please do. And just an FYI, I don't always add this disclaimer. I'm going to try to get better at adding this for people who are confused. Those events are intended for our MTCA students. So head over to mtca.com. It means you will have to have done initial consultation with us and then some small coaching minimums. Some of our events like our webinars, you'll hear me talk about webinars and things you could drop in as a non-MTCA listener, but others other events do have some of those minimum requirements to participate. All right, shall we dive into this interview? I hope you're all well out there. Hope you're staying warm. It's chilly this morning as I was biking in. And I really hope you enjoy this interview with Brandt Russell from CCM.

[6:37] Charlie Murphy: Well, we are so excited to be joined by Brandt Russell. Brandt has a BA in political science from Kenyon College and MFA in stage directing from Northwestern University. He's a theater director, writer, and of course, educator, previously a visiting professor at Kenyon College before becoming associate professor and chair of the acting program at CCM, which is still located in Cincinnati, Ohio. They shoot for classes of about 12 to 15, and they offer degrees at BFA in acting. That's the acting program. And then of course, as we know previously, BFA is in musical theater, BFA is in dance, et cetera, at CCM. Brandt, welcome on the pod. How are you feeling today?

[7:14] Brant Russell: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to it for a few weeks, actually. Recruiting has been an unexpected joy of the job for me. So I love talking about our students. I love talking about our faculty. I love it.

[7:23] Charlie Murphy: Well, we'll dive in. Hopefully we get some recruiting. This is just information. We'll see how much recruiting we do from this pod, really. I will just say this is our third time having CCM on the pod. So often we call these like an act three episode, or we've had Eric Santagata on, we had Rachel Stevens on previously, but they were both talking musical theater. So this is really act one of a brand new play. That's right. Diving into the acting department. And then certainly we'll talk about the acting and musical theater in terms of how it works at CCM in different ways. I'd love to just give you the chance to introduce yourself a little bit in terms of, I gave you that little bio of where you went to school, but what would you want to tell people about your journey to CCM in terms of what we'd want to know about you before we dive into the school?

[8:03] Brant Russell: Oh, that's a great question. So I've been a director and a writer for a long time, and I've been teaching for a portion of that. And teaching quickly became a huge component of my life, partially because I really enjoyed it and I really liked working, frankly, I really liked working with young people. I really liked working with undergrads, grad students. And CCM is a really great place to be, right? So I don't know if I would feel that, I don't know if I would have just told you that if I was teaching someplace else. I'd probably be like, yeah, teaching is, it pays the bills. So I think that I am here, I'm at CCM because I want to be at CCM. I think that everybody has a different journey to where they are in any given moment. And I'm just really grateful that mine has taken me here.

[8:51] Charlie Murphy: I love it. I'd love to, I ask each guest to sort of start off by giving me their broad perspective on like what a CCM student is or whatever the university student is. And especially given that you have been so joyfully landing here, I want to hear about that as CCM. I'd love to hear that. Plus I'm going to give you the added challenge of specifically, if you were to define what a CCM acting student is, what the CCM acting department is, not necessarily in contradiction to this musical theater, but just what is a CCM student and then what specifically is a CCM acting student from your perspective?

[9:22] Brant Russell: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that more often than not, students who are graduating high school come to CCM acting for one of two reasons. One is they're auditioning for musical theater at CCM and they're interested in the acting program. Or the other way around, which is they are interested in acting, even though in high school they had primarily musical theater experience because that's what high schools do. And that's great. They're interested in what acting is. They're curious about what acting is, and they have Googled or they have done some research about acting programs. And so they're coming to us irrespective of MT. They're not even auditioning for MT programs. And I will say that we get students from both camps and that's great, but a student's process through the pre-screen callback, decision-making extravaganza that is the spring semester of a senior in high school, if they're interested in musical theater at the beginning of that, they're probably going to end up in musical theater at the end of that.

And this is what I tell students and parents when I'm talking with them about CCM acting, is that if you can't imagine spending every day of your eight semesters of your wild and precious life singing and dancing and doing musical theater, even a mid-level musical theater program is going to make you happier than the greatest acting program in the world. You need to go where you are going to be doing on a daily basis what your heart wants to do. It's about the experience of the eight semesters that you have at that institution. It's not about how it sets you up for alumni network. Yeah, that's important. It's not about the methodologies that you find on the website. Although, yeah, that's important.

It's about, are you going to be happy there on a daily basis? Because if you're not going to be happy there on a day-to-day basis, both in terms of who your cohort is, who your faculty are, and what you're doing, no degree is worth that.

[11:37] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. I mean, especially addressing that second half of the question, and I think, you know, for so many of our listeners, and a lot of people listening to this will be people who are specifically interested in acting programs, you know, many of our students are, I would say, like somewhere on the spectrum from MT to actor, right? I think most of the people, a lot of our students will be in that second category you've mentioned of they started out doing musicals from high school, and then they're not sure, and that, you know, that was me ultimately. I went to Carnegie Mellon for acting, but, you know, I started in high school. We did musicals. That's what people do. And so at some point I realized that at 16, this is what I want.

Some people realize at 17, at 18, you know, they don't know where it's going to happen. Keep that passion, right? Like, and look, I'm not going to lie to you. Like, we have students and graduates who are, like, we have a 2025 graduate, Evan, who's about to go on tour with Waitress, right? The national tour of Waitress. So, like, it's not like doing an acting BFA is going to cut you off from stuff. It's about the four years that you're there. What do you want to do for four years?

[12:39] Brant Russell: Yeah, I love it. But wait, so let's go back and answer a little bit more. The first part of the question, though maybe more broadly, like, what are the kind of human beings that you see as CCM students? Who are these people? You know, a little bit, you've been to Kenyon, you've been to Northwestern, you've seen other students, you know, from other schools. What makes a CCM student a CCM student?

[12:54] Brant Russell: Yeah, so the CCM student and the kinds of actors that we're drawn to and the kinds of actors who are drawn to us are usually searchers, which is to say they are searching for how they can be an artist through the vehicle of acting. They are interested in how do I apply my perspective, my point of view, who I am as a human being? How do I bring that to this art form? And we're here to give them that opportunity over eight semesters, right? So they are not generally people who have a super clear picture of what their five and 10-year plan looks like. They may have an inkling, but that's not generally the kind of actor that is drawn to us. The kind of actor who's drawn to us is the kind of actor who's actually going to be interested in the required courses that our students take outside of this building.

They want to take the English literature classes. They want to take the psychology classes. They're curious human beings who want to go to college, right? It's college that happens to be a BFA acting track. We have eight semesters of acting, eight semesters of movement, eight semesters of voice production. We have all the critical aspects, script analysis, history courses, et cetera. We're a BFA acting program. But the state of Ohio also requires our students to be pretty fluent in a couple of English comp classes. You have to take a science class, right? So it's college.

[14:53] Charlie Murphy: You segued me beautifully into the next question when you were talking about the curriculum, where you've got eight semesters of such things. I'd love to hear, especially, about that acting sequence, what that looks like, what you're going to take me through that, but then all the other things too that you mentioned. We do movement, we do whatever. So maybe let's just focus specifically on the acting curriculum or the artistic curriculum, and then I want to talk about the college part of it too.

[15:12] Brant Russell: Yeah. So the eight-semester acting sequence is probably the thing about our curriculum that we are the most protective of, right? And the movement and voice are a huge component of that, don't get me wrong. But when we sort of think about, well, what do my colleagues want to teach outside of their specialty, right? If I want to teach a special topics class in adaptation, great, but how do we really preserve that core of the eight semesters of acting? Because that is the heart of the education. To reiterate, all of our students are taking acting, movement, and voice every single semester at CCM. So those three courses are in conversation with each other throughout the semester. And especially in that first year, movement and acting are really married.

So that first semester is all about Suzuki in movement class, viewpoints in movement class, and then ensemble building in the acting class, right? We don't do an approach where like, we have to break you down to build you back up. That's not helpful to anybody. What is helpful, we find. And to go back to your last question, what makes a CCM acting student an acting student here is that they are members of an ensemble. They are generous collaborators who are looking to lift up the person next to them. And when that happens in a sort of like feedback loop between every member of the ensemble, something really exciting happens. And then in the second semester of acting, we get into Stanislavski, a little script analysis-y type acting sort of exercises, because also in that spring semester of the freshman year, I'm teaching script analysis, right?

So they're getting that. They're getting Aristotle and Stanislavski, and I do a little Brakt, right? They're getting that from a couple of different angles. And then in fall of the sophomore year, they're getting personalization and emotional availability with Ute Hagen. In spring of the sophomore year, we are-

[17:13] Charlie Murphy: You're not with Ute Hagen. You're saying you'll be doing Ute Hagen.

[17:16] Brant Russell: No, we are reading Ute Hagen.

[17:18] Charlie Murphy: I was like, my God, what have you done?

[17:20] Brant Russell: She's everywhere. Yeah, she permeates the room. And then in spring of the sophomore year, we're focusing exclusively on Shakespeare. And that weirdly, that also is married to what they're doing in movement class in spring of the sophomore year with period styles movement, right? So they're doing Shakespeare at the same time, they're also learning what a Bergamasque is. In the junior year, we have two full semesters of Michael Chekhov. And that's everything from atmosphere and imagination to emotional reality, etc. And that's frankly, like, that's something my colleague Kay Jenny Jones teaches, and she's a wizard. And I don't understand, right? But like, I'm also not an actor. And then in the senior year, the fall semester is digital acting techniques.

And that's almost exclusively on camera in the acting class. And then in spring of the senior year, it's audition techniques for stage and screen in acting. And also in that spring of the senior year, we're in Chicago, we're in New York, sometimes we go to LA for showcase. So it's sort of the schedule there gets a little, how shall we say, haphazard.

[18:29] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, it's, I think, really interesting and helpful for our listeners. You know, so often we hear the feedback is why one of the reasons we want to start the podcast, we have these discussions, is like, so much of the curriculum can look similar from school to school. And you say, what is a BFA? And it's actually 1, 2, 3, 4. But even just hearing it, this will now be in sequence of the past couple weeks of like, how schools choose to start, I think it's really interesting in terms of like, you know, Julliard just was talking about how they really like to start with imagination. So it's all just from, and I know with Carnegie Mellon, we started with like text, it was text was first. So even hearing like, hey, this movement ensemble is so important as a launching off point, you're going to get a lot of the same stuff at different schools, but depending on what order it goes in, it will feel different how you lay the foundation. So you can feel like different actors.

[19:13] Brant Russell: Yeah, we talk about it like, we talk about it like pizza, right? Our pizza is great. Julliard's pizza is also great.

[19:20] Charlie Murphy: Same ingredients, maybe.

[19:21] Brant Russell: Yes, the same ingredients. It's a question of like, which pizza do you like better?

[19:24] Charlie Murphy: Yeah.

[19:25] Brant Russell: You're still going to get pizza. It's still going to be amazing.

[19:28] Charlie Murphy: I love it. You mentioned the academics in terms of what the necessary academics, as best as you can, like place it on the spectrum of, you know, how conservatory like the school is basically meaning how many academics do I have to take? And then basically in terms of your students, how many of them choose to take more in terms of getting minors or is it possible to get double majors? How does that work with CCM acting? How the academics fit into the artistic work?

[19:53] Brant Russell: So we are a pretty hardcore BFA conservatory style training program. The state of Ohio, I think it was last year, imposed something called OT36, which is every student at a public university in the state of Ohio has to graduate with a certain amount of fluency in different classes, right? And that's everything from civics and history to a lab science and natural history. And so I think over the course of eight semesters, I think our students are taking somewhere between six and eight classes outside of our building in one of those required-

[20:23] Charlie Murphy: Oh, is it one a semester of academic classes?

[20:26] Brant Russell: If, like if that.

[20:27] Charlie Murphy: If that.

[20:29] Brant Russell: And many of them choose to do more because they're searching, right? And so like a bunch of my first years right now are taking an introduction to philosophy class and I'm like, that's awesome. That's great. We are also revamping some of our courses to fit into those OT36 requirements, right? So like I have historically for the past 13 years taught a class called history of directing, which is essentially history of modern theater because directing wasn't really invented until halfway through the 19th century. So we've been covering what was happening in Germany in 1938, right? Because we all know we were covering what Brecht was doing at that time, what Antony Narteau was doing, et cetera. That's probably now going to get folded into a two-semester history of theater sequence that ticks a lot of other different boxes.

We're like trying to consolidate our students' time so that their BFA classes are also ticking those necessary boxes so, and this is an answer to the second part of your question, they can go get concentrations and minors all around the university. We have students who get concentrations and minors in everything from like English and women's and gender studies to directing for the camera, to music, to everything in between. So the thing that like, the piece of feedback that I get the most from students when they choose to come here versus another program is I wanted to be part of a large university that had a broad array of offerings, of academic offerings. I wanted to be able to take introduction to philosophy and I wanted to be able to get a minor in directing for the camera. And that's a harder thing to do at smaller schools.

[22:06] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And it sounds like the ticking off the academic boxes for you, the goal there is really giving them optionality of what those, so they could, if they're taking one a semester, other academic classes, they don't have to take the one that's required by OT36, they have the ability to do other things.

[22:22] Brant Russell: Yeah. And so any number of classes that they take will tick that OT36 box, right? It's like broad categories. And the students who walk in here with what's called advanced standing, like AP tests, or they've, you know, maybe taken a college class or two while they were still in high school, the world is very much their oyster. I mean, they have tackled, like we had a couple of years ago, and if they're listening to this, they'll recognize who they are. We had a math minor in our program. And I would talk about it all the time because I was like, this is actually sort of weirdly a quintessential CCM acting student, right? Is somebody who's a really great actor, a really promising director, like just starting to get interested in directing and is now also a math minor because why not? And so that's what I think is, I don't know other programs very well. I don't do market research, but I think we might be approaching unique in that.

[23:15] Charlie Murphy: I love it. Talk to me about the interaction with the music theater major. So you mentioned the first category of people might be people who were interested in CCM MT, at least originally, and then found you or so both. And we'll talk about this in the second half when we talk a little bit more about auditions and how that works to potentially audition at different programs. But how does it work once you're in the program of how permeable that membrane is between interaction? If I'm an actor who I want to focus on acting, but I like singing and I wouldn't mind some singing classes, or I want to take some dance. How does that work in terms of getting across that line?

[23:45] Brant Russell: The membrane is almost non-permeable, which is to say that those resources and those productions for MT are for MT students. And our resources and our productions and our faculty are for acting students. So right now in our acting program, we have 55 students across four years, and we have five full-time faculty and I think four adjuncts this semester. So that's an awfully good student to faculty.

[24:13] Charlie Murphy: And you're saying that works with the actors.

[24:18] Brant Russell: It's not just for the actors yet. I mean, that is not completely unique, but that is, I'll say, rarer than the other. It is more common that there's more interaction, even if they're really separate majors and they have separate classes. I think it is a stricter line at CCM than it is at other places. Part of why I'm asking that question. And I think that actually that's the point, right, for us, is that the foundational courses in acting for the acting student are necessarily fundamentally different than the foundational courses from the MT program, because we're scaffolding differently. So we can't build two different buildings from the same foundation, to use a really literal metaphor. So I think the point of the separation is that it benefits all parties, but the upshot is that it's way more resource intensive to have two totally separate programs. For sure, right. And so I think we're really fortunate to have as many full-time devoted faculty and adjuncts as we have, given that we have 55 students across four years.

[25:22] Charlie Murphy: But now, am I correct to understand that the acting program is still located within the School of Music? Isn't that an odd, that you are CCM, you're not University of Cincinnati acting, but you're CCM.

[25:32] Brant Russell: That's right. So the College Conservatory of Music has divisions in, you know, music performance like viola. It has a media production division that we interact with extremely heavily. It also has a theater arts production and arts administration division that we are part of. And our division is acting, musical theater, dance, arts administration, and theatrical design and production. So we are, you're catching me at a good time because I was just making this slide for a presentation for our students, but we have 55 students in our department, in a division that has about 400, that has 414 students, in a college that has about 1500 students, in a university that has about 53,000 students.

[26:14] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, huge university, yeah.

[26:20] Brant Russell: Right? So like we're always intersecting, our students are always intersecting at those different sort of intersections, right? So they're one of 55, they're one of 414, they're one of 53,000 multiple times a day. So on Friday, when we have our like divisional pep rally, they'll take classes with their cohort where they're one of 12. Then they'll go to an event with just the department where they're one of 55, and they'll go to our divisional pep rally where they're one of 414. And then they'll go do whatever it is they're going to do on a Friday night, where they will be one of 53,000.

[26:51] Charlie Murphy: This is interesting and notable only to the academic heads of it all, of which schools house which programs. People do think to themselves like, wait, does that mean it's a more music-based thing because it's in the School of Music, or sometimes with musical theater schools, because it's in the School of Drama, often that's just the way it's set up.

[27:06] Brant Russell: No, it's just the things that, it's just what things are called, right? Like the College Conservatory of Music is not where you would expect to find a really high caliber sports broadcasting department, but sure enough.

[27:20] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Okay, give me a little bit, you started saying the size of the school, but just give me a sense of what it is to be a University of Cincinnati student, I guess, if we're saying it that way, in terms of the outside of the theater program. We talk about some of the academics, but what does that give me access to? What is that feel going to feel like? Is it going to feel like how I picture rah-rah in football? I mean, what is the experience of the broader university experience?

[27:43] Brant Russell: So you are going to a like, for lack of a better word, a pretty traditional Midwestern big university, right? You can, we have students who go to football games all the time. That's great. And we have students who are like, oh, that's a sport. So we have everything. Sometimes students come to us as opposed to another place because they not only want that college education, and they're curious, but they also want the college experience. Like we have students who join sororities and fraternities. We have students who are part of Greek organizations everywhere. So I think what might characterize a UC student's experience is, and this sounds like I'm giving you a buzzword, but it's, I kind of mean it, which is that it's, I think diversity is what characterizes the experience of your UC student. Because you are having a diversity of experience on a daily basis that I certainly didn't have at my small liberal arts college, right?

[28:45] Brant Russell: And then you add to that, that we're also in an urban area. It's a little bit of a, it can make for, oh, what's the word? A disconcerting experience your first couple of days, because you're in a very sort of collegiate environment, right? Rah-rah football, and then you walk across the street and you're in downtown Cincinnati, and that's where your dorm is. And so, I think what our students who moved to New York say to us, weirdly, is that being here for four years was kind of perfect training for living in New York, which is, I think, not the case if you're going to L.A. But, yeah. But you're saying that within these, sort of, a bubble within a larger university, which is not, you know, you're in a tiny class, a class of 12 to 15 or whatever it is, in a huge university, but you're also in a campus environment, but it's really within a city.

Those dichotomies are sort of striking to people. Yeah, it can create a little bit of, it can be jarring, right? And then the other thing is that our first years also go downtown and understudy at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. So, they are getting professional experience pretty much from day one, but they're also, like, taking the bus and taking the streetcar, and they are citizens of the city of Cincinnati right away. And that, I think, that's something I'm really proud of, because I want them to be full-throated citizens of wherever they find themselves, and I don't think that keeping them cloistered in this building is going to do that. I love it. You mentioned already, you know, some of the senior acting classes, how they may be more digital-focused and audition-focused.

So, I'd love to talk about the preparation for the launch into the business, both in terms of anything else you want to say about the training and preparation, but then also when you talk about showcase, when we talk about preparation to talk with agents and managers, and how do we sort of prepare them to launch into the business itself? I think our three-semester sequence of professional prep is the thing that is by far the most resource-intensive for us as a department, and requires the most work from our faculty and from our students. So, in the spring of the junior year, they're taking Audition and Business Skills, and that's co-taught with my colleague Denton Yockey, who shares an appointment between us and Arts Administration, and Lynn Myers, who's a local casting director.

Every movie or on-camera production that comes to Cincinnati, she's kind of the casting director, and she also runs Ensemble Theater Cincinnati, and they co-teach Audition and Business Skills. Okay, and then in fall of the senior year, we begin the two-semester sequence of Senior Seminar, and that creates not only all of our digital assets for the senior showcase, it also sort of connects them with mentors in the city where they plan to move. But I said with the caveat that sometimes they end up going somewhere different, right? So, I ask them, you know, in fall of their senior year, like, where are you thinking you might go? And nine times out of ten, they're going to say New York, LA, or Chicago.

One time out of ten, they'll say something like Atlanta, or there's a place in Texas that many of our voiceover, you know, artists go to, because a lot of our students go on to be voiceover artists. And so, I'll pair them with a professional who's working in the city where they are going. And that professional is not a part of our alumni network, because that alumni network you get for free. The mentor that they're going to have when they land is an additional relationship. And then by the time they graduate, we have the digital showcase, which I encourage everybody who's watching or listening to visit, because I'm really proud of it. It includes a film scene. It includes a self-tape. It includes, you know, the links to the personal website and the actor's access.

And then it also has their voiceover demo. So, every student walks out of here with a reel and a voiceover demo. And that senior showcase, that digital senior showcase, gets exponentially more eyeballs on it than, you know, any, than the live showcase that we prep and also do. So, then we take that live showcase to Chicago over spring break, because so many of our students are interested in Chicago, and being from there, I'm all for it. And then after the semester ends, usually early May, we go to New York City, and we do a week of workshops and masterclasses and relationship building with professionals in New York. Yeah, I love it. And you said maybe LA? Yeah, we've gone to LA in the past. And then recently, our students have been like, no, I don't want to go to LA.

I want to go to New York or Chicago or Atlanta. And I just haven't been able to, I'm sort of like, look, if nobody here is going to move to LA, then why would we go? And then what happens is that they all move to LA, right? So, I'm sort of like, well, okay, then we should just do that anyways, right? So, we are really fortunate to have a pretty strong alumni network in Los Angeles. And that is because we are collaborating so intensively with media production while we're here, that by the time our students graduate, they've done any number of short films, many of which have won Ohio Valley Regional Emmys, they have plenty of exposure and plenty of experience on a set. And so they're kind of ready to go to LA, they just think they want to go to New York or Chicago.

And I'm always like, look, you should do what you want. Absolutely. You will end up where you're meant to be. I have every faith that you will do that. And then they end up in LA. You know, and regular listeners of this podcast will have heard a lot of different versions of showcase thoughts and what people have in terms of their launch of it. Just worth highlighting and noting that the digital elements that we're often saying in 2026 are so essential to graduate from school with some digital elements. To that point of you might move to New York and then a year later move to LA and you're going to want to have a great reel because you're not getting another chance at a showcase. So you're going to want to have those great digital.

And you know, so okay, let's say 150 people come to your live showcase. That's great. We'll get that in a couple of hours on the digital showcase when we launch it, right. And so that portable asset of that showcase, right, because every student gets their own showcase, you know, page. It is essential for them moving forward. And so I'm really proud of the way that we empower our students to go make work wherever they find themselves, right. Our students are devising plays every single year. We have an annual festival of transmigration. They devise their own plays every single year. Our students have a lot of experience doing voiceover by the time they leave here. They have a lot of experience on camera.

Our students are empowered to go make work and make a living in whatever format they want, wherever they may find themselves. So if they have to move back home to St. Louis to save up for a year before they go where they want to go, they know how to find their people and make work in St. Louis. Yeah. I love it. And you also mentioned, I'd love for you to talk about how many of your students, either during school or during summers, or how many either stay in Cincinnati for a bit of time as they're building their post-school resume, but also just how does it work with, you know, I know in Pittsburgh, I got opportunities to work with local agents and local films and did a little, a couple of things that made me confidence-wise feel ready to move.

Cause I was like, okay, I've done this before. I've done some of this, what it is to interact with it. How, how does that work with your students in Cincinnati? Are they, are they working during school? Are they working during summers in terms of using this? What is available in Cincinnati? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is so much. So before we started talking, I had a student in here who is doing the summer tour with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. They do a summer, summer in the parks tour every year, right? Where they go to like 50 parks in the Cincinnati regional area and do their, their traveling production this year. It's Much Ado About Nothing. I have a student in it who's just about to start his senior year and a student who graduated in May, who were both in it.

This student was in here sort of like, oh my God, my last performance of Much Ado About Nothing conflicts with my acting class. What am I going to do? I can't miss a class. And I was like, don't worry, we'll figure it out. It'll be fine. This isn't our first rodeo, right? So that's like a very small example of the kinds of relationships that our students are building while they're here. And that's intentional because we have an agreement with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company where our students understudy their productions. I have, I have a colleague, Jeremy Dubin at Cincy Shakes who facilitates all that, right? So he brings them into the first rehearsal. He introduces them around. They are parts of that process from soup to nuts.

And then, so, and also like I'm about to direct Merry Wives of Windsor at Cincy Shakes and I'm going to use an assistant from my program. I'm going to use three or four understudies from my program, right? Part of the professional sort of enmeshment that we have is because we, the five of us full-time faculty are working around here. And then we also this year are going to be residents at the Arts and Incubator Project at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park where we'll be developing new work in their studio all year. So the relationships that our students are building while they're here are sometimes actually enough to keep them here for a little while after they graduate. The Associate Artistic Director of Ensemble Theater Cincinnati is a grad of our program.

And I think, and she went to New York, right? Like Tori, she left, she graduated, she went to New York, she was great. Then she came back and started working constantly and she was like, oh, just stay here. Because sometimes our students, I should say our graduates, realize that working as much as they can and making a living, wherever that is, is what they want. That's what they've been searching for. And they're going to find that sometimes in Cincinnati, sometimes in San Jose, right? We are not funneling our students to a single location. So that's the longer answer to your question because it's about the sort of relationships that they build professionally while they're here and the money that they make while they do that.

We also, a couple of years ago, we did a co-production with the Noh Theater of Cincinnati of a new musical, right? And like, I think that sometimes the variety and the, again, there's that word again, diversity of work that we do on a production basis, because we do a lot of on-camera production work, we did a musical co-production, we do Shakespeare, we premiered a new adaptation of Rope last semester, can be sort of like jarring for a prospective student because they're like, well, what kind of work do you do? And my answer is always like, how long do you have? We do so many different kinds of work. So sometimes those professional relationships that they build in Cincinnati are because they've identified a specific kind of work that they like and they gravitate towards that work, right?

So like, we have a graduate who runs a puppet company in Chicago and we have, you know, that's because I think that's the student that we hooked up with Bread and Puppet in Vermont at some point during their junior year. And the diversity of outcomes that our graduates have is something I'm also really proud of. That was a really long and meandering answer. I liked every bit of it, meander as you will, as you should. You mentioned money that people make, let's talk about money that people spend in terms of the cost. Again, our crack research team came up with, it looks like about 16,000 for residents. So that means Ohio residents and then 32,000 for out of state. How do we expect those costs to come down in terms of, you know, imagining students who don't pay sticker price?

Is it mostly about academic scholarships? Is it mostly about need-based scholarships? Does it work in terms of talent scholarships? How do those factor in for your student primarily? Hugely. So I remember I was recruiting at YPASS in Louisville, the Youth Performing Arts School in Louisville. And I was talking to some students and next to me was a professor from a private institution that I don't remember the name of. And I'm not being coy, I literally just don't remember what it was. But these students left and I was waiting on these other students to come sit down. And she was saying, okay, the sticker price for this place is XYZ, nobody pays that. What I'm offering you, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, wow, that is so different than how we approach it, right?

Because we are a public university and our in-state tuition is 16K. That's the sticker price that, you know, we sort of are like, that's the price, right? And out-of-state students, you know, it's 32, right? But here's what I will say about how we cut that down. For out-of-state students in particular, there is what's called a National Outreach Award, which last cycle was $10,000 off the top for every student who walks in with a certain GPA. And it's pretty high, right? It's like a high GPA. But if you have that GPA, and a lot of our students do have high GPAs, that's 10K off the top. And there's some other academic scholarships that are offered through the university. Then there are talent and merit scholarships that are offered through CCM and through the acting department.

And that knocks it down a lot more, right? So we have students who pay full freight, and we have students who pay very little, because they're able to cobble together sort of a scholarship package that, and this is what's most important to me also as a dad, that saddles them with the least amount of debt possible. And the other tip that I will give everyone listening in and watching us today is room and board is a trip. If you add room and board to that freshman year, it gets a lot more expensive. And what you need to find out when you, junior in high school, who is thinking about college at this moment. And junior high school parent, a lot of listeners, yeah. Yes. What does room and board look like sophomore, junior, and senior year?

Because for our students, that room and board price that freshman year is high. Like I think it's almost as much as in-state tuition. And then sophomore through senior year, they live off campus and it's cut in half. Right. Which if you're doing New York, it's incredibly high when it's, you know, whatever the university is that's in New York and still incredibly high anywhere else. You can like, unless you're going to live in the Bronx or something, it's wild. Like, yeah. Well, and, you know, I think that even when we have students who are local, who, you know, come from the suburbs, many of them, actually their sophomore through senior year live on campus. Because while living in a dorm may have been cost prohibitive that freshman year, on campus.

[43:37] ♪ Musical number ♪

[57:30] Brant Russell: The University of Cincinnati has a pretty wide net in terms of academic admissions, right? So if you, you know, if you did okay in high school, you'll be fine. But that is sufficient or rather necessary, but not sufficient for entry into CCM Acting because what we are concerned in is the audition. The only time I ever look at a high school transcript is when you've already been accepted. Yeah. I also want to ask about the wild card, because you guys are an acting program that does ask for a wild card. What are you interested in the wild card? What do you like to see? And is there anything that you see that you go, oh, don't do this? Oh, my gosh, I have seen sometimes the wild card is the first thing we watch.

In fact, I would say I know for so for the five of us, I know for two of us, it's the first thing they watch. And we like that because sometimes you are not able to get your entire self across in a, you know, 90 second monologue when you're 17 years old, and you need that extra space to tell us about yourself. And we love that because we are, after all, accepting the whole person. We're not accepting just the part of you that acts. So we've seen everything like we have a sophomore who was sort of like, here's why I'm passionate about coffee. Ready, buckle up. And she took us through it, man. And like, I instantly felt like a goof for the like, crappy coffee that I drink. But like, that's, that's good.

Like, I want to know about that. That's really interesting to me. That tells me that like, your ability to get nerdy about something. Yeah. Is broad. Yeah. And I also think, by the way, perhaps half the time, those special interests, those wildcard videos are musical in nature. And it's not me singing a ballad from XYZ the musical, it's me and a guitar singing this thing. Or it's here's a film that I put together with my, you know, using whatever editing software I have at home. And I'm really interested in filmmaking. And this is what I've created. Okay, great. Like that actually fills in a lot of gaps for us. And I think that's partially because we are just not looking at technique the same way that our peer institutions are in these videos.

We are looking at the whole human being techniques a part of it. But if you've mastered technique at 17, go work. No, but I love hearing that. And I think helpful for our families to hear and so it's difficult with all the different schools and how they can work differently. But you know, I think a lot of them are very concerned with not having any redundancy across their application. So if I talk about an essay, I can't have it in the wildcard. But just hearing that like idea of like, this might be the thing that this is their video essay, they're seeing this is how they're going to introduce yourself. So just because it's on your resume under an academic section doesn't mean you can't talk about it.

And by the way, like, I'm not reading your essay, right? We're not reading your essay. And it's a tricky some schools might but even that goes it's not the what do you want to talk about? What's your best thing? I was like, I would go with that as opposed to the thing that's like, Oh, this is completely new. And I've never there's never looked at this corner of me. Yes. And frankly, like the university may read your essay, they may look at your application, but I'm relying on them to do that. And they're not going to watch your pre screen. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's tricky, because again, it's gonna be a little different, but still, you know, a little bit of redundancy is not the end of the world.

[1:00:51] Brant Russell: Okay, I want to move toward wrapping up because I'm trying to let you out of here on time. You mentioned also being offline, you mentioned you're a parent who's going through an artistic version of this process. Yeah, I'd love to speak specifically to our parent listeners, many of whom have children only a little older than your own. Yeah. What advice would you have in terms of how they can guide their children through this artistic world, this artistic life and certainly this process? So I'm going to start with an anecdote, and then I'm going to expand into a longer, more boring answer. But the as an employee of the University of Cincinnati, we have tuition, you know, our students, our kids can be students that you see without paying tuition.

And so when I'm talking to my kids about college, and the ever escalating costs of colleges, I say, you know what, you guys, you can go wherever you want, and you're going to love the University of Cincinnati. So because we can't pretend that price isn't part of it. And I am really fortunate from the education from which I benefited, and I feel duty bound to provide that to my students. And I feel really good about the fact that a student who lives in Ohio, Indiana or Kentucky can go here for the rate of 16k a year. And then they're going to get scholarships off of that almost guaranteed, right? So it depends on their grades, if they're from Indiana or Kentucky, it's a weird constellation, you get it.

But I think that you want to go, parents, with your student to go visit these places. Because what your student responds to, what your child responds to, may not have been what you predicted. And you're going to learn about, I see parents learn about their kids while they're here visiting. And sometimes what they learn is like, oh my god, they need to be at a small school where they're going to be one of like 2000 students at the very most. And it's going to be out in the middle of nowhere. And that's what they need. You should do that. But paying for school is a real thing. And I'm not going to pretend that like you should, I would be lying to you if I were like, you should go to the best place you can, cost be damned. That's not realistic. That's not real. You should go where you're going to have the best eight semesters of daily experience, that is going to saddle you with the least amount of debt.

[1:03:25] Brant Russell: Yeah, that's so well said. And so true. For the families who can afford it and who have a bajillion dollars, then great, then you don't need to listen to this podcast and you're fine. But you know, what we were talking about with my, so my 14 year old is about to go to a private boarding school. And they were sort of like, here's this scholarship offer right off the top. And I was like, man, that's great. But that's a sticker price that I don't think anybody pays. And if you nine times out of 10, if you're, if you're deciding between CCM acting and some other private school, and that private school has offered you $35,000 in scholarship, our bottom line is going to still going to be better than that private school.

And they know exactly what they're doing in terms of offering you a certain amount of flattery and visibility with a scholarship. And I'm not going to pretend that's nothing. I'm not going to look down my nose at that. That's meaningful. But at the end of the day, you have to look at the bottom line. And if the bottom line is lower for a place that is offering you this much scholarship still, I wonder what you are paying for there. Yeah. And the thing we said before the pod is the 16K CCM sticker price is no less valuable than some of these 60K programs. I mean, it's just, it deceives the eye and makes you think, okay, that must mean that this program is worth four times as much. You go, that's just not true.

I mean, it's just not, there are things in the life that may be true for, but I think actually with a lot of pricing, it's not always true. And certainly with arts education, it's not like you are getting the same, the same pizza, even if it's baked a little differently than some of these 60Ks. Because probably about half of that bill for the pizza is footed by the taxpayers of the state of Ohio. Like that's why you go to a big public school like this is that it's part, it's like public transport, right? It's still going to cost you something, but it's going to cost you a lot less because it's part of our tax system. So let Ohio pay for your pizza. That's what you're saying.

[1:05:13] Charlie Murphy: Yes, right. Do us the respect of not getting pineapple.

[1:05:18] Brant Russell: Brad, this was so great. If people want more information, do you like them going to social media? Like them go to the website, any places particularly you'd send if people want to hear more?

[1:05:24] Brant Russell: Yeah. I mean, I think if you Google CCM acting, there's nothing out there that's lies. I think you can also just, just email me and I'm going to respond to you. So it's just brant.russell@uc.edu. And it's really easy. And, uh, but if you visit our Insta, that's our students run that. And that's pretty, that's updated pretty frequently. Um, but you know, let's talk. I'm, and I'm happy to talk to parents too. I spend a lot of time on the phone with parents of students who I never see walking through the door. So like, I'm happy to do that. I'll just give you free advice. Thanks for the time today, man. I really appreciate it.

[1:05:58] Charlie Murphy: Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.

[1:06:05] Charlie Murphy: Okay. I'm going to be really quick on this one. Not because this episode isn't deserving of a very long takeaway. I think I had eight bullet points written down, but just because I've got to go home ASAP to get my child so that my wife can go out to dinner with her friends. Now, do I think that's a good reason for you to get a short takeaway? It is not. But then again, this podcast is a free resource, so you're going to have to live with a rapid fire takeaway today. Here we go. Okay. Number one, uh, I love the discussion of spectrum for musical theater students versus actors. You all know, if you listen to this podcast, I like to think of it less as a binary. So yes, I co-sponsor all less of a binary.

I said that, right? Yeah. I co-sponsor all discussions that think of it that way as a spectrum and not a binary. Okay. We're slowing up on our, our rapid fire because I'm questioning if I said it right. Uh, number two, love the term searchers. I could say more, but I won't. Great term searchers. Three, uh, just underline and noting the specific mentorship as part of the showcase and the way they talked about in their digital showcase. So that was really cool in terms of, you know, we were talking about what are the specificity of how you're, you're going to make your showcase unique and different. I like what, uh, Brandon talked about there, uh, and agreed on the total dollar figure of it all.

You know, he brought up that idea of don't be fooled by what is the total dollar figure versus what the scholarship we're getting. You know, I don't think many of our families actually are confused in the decision-making where they go, well, they gave me 40,000. I guess I'll pay an extra 20. I don't think it's what it comes down to the end of it that they're actually confused. But I think what brands really speaking to is, you know, sometimes in the aggressiveness of negotiation, if you're going to a state school and saying, Hey, this private school just gave me 50 K off of 80 K total, what can you offer me? You know, they may look at you and be like, our total cost is 25 K. You want me to give you 50 K? You want me to pay you 25 K to go to school?

Right. So always worth just being smart and, you know, and strategic in terms of when do you want to talk total dollar figures when it looks good for you, which I certainly not mad about you bringing a scholarship figure to a state school, but also worth factoring in the idea of costs when you're talking about realistic negotiation and certainly can help there to have an ask. If you're saying they're giving me X, can you give me Y? So you would be a total cost that's more similar, et cetera. Um, I also love including room and board costs in your total calculation. I don't think I've been doing that enough. I just haven't been doing it for the first 300 episodes. So now I don't want to go back and start adding in a room of board now, because it's going to make all the figures sound different and weird.

Um, I also do think that's not something that people are generally fooled by. You understand that room board is going to be part of your costs. So I'm just being clear when we talk about tuition differences and room and board differences are not going to be as big, but it is smart to note that living in Ohio is cheaper than living in New York or LA. I think most people know that, but if you're not factoring that in, because you're looking at five or six different schools and you are just looking at tuition, it's worth noting. Yeah, that's true. And to Brant's point, at some places where room and board will be higher at the school, it'll be even cheaper if the local cost is lower versus in New York, it's expensive to go to school and live in on campus. It's also very expensive to go to school and live off campus. Uh, so you're not going to get as much of a savings there.

[1:06:28] Charlie Murphy: All right. Number six, uh, I love the idea of watching out for redundancy of experience in the wild card. Very smart. You know, we always talk about what, what new side of yourself can you show me? Can you show me something different than what I saw in your monologues and songs? That's not to say there can never be any element of repeat. Of course it could be right. You know, you could be funny in a monologue and then your wild card could still be funny. Right? Especially, I would say that's true. If like funny is really a truth thing about you, you want to lead with funny. Great. Right. But I would just be careful when you're thinking about it, think of it as something new and different as opposed to, Oh, here's another chance for me to perform a little bit more.

Right. You know, but what they really wanted was three monologues. They said they only wanted two monologues, but they really want a third monologue. That's kind of similar to my other ones. Right. Uh, that's not the goal. Right. Show me something new. Show me something different. You know, I do think it's like actors sometimes will include multiple takes on their audition submissions. Right. And you can do that sometimes in the right case for the right actor. Right. Again, this is not for college additions. To be clear, you would never submit multiple of the same monologue to a college. Right. But sometimes in the professional world, that would happen. You might send it to your agents or managers, or you might even include it to a casting director, depending on the submission itself and depending on your comfort level.

But when you include multiple versions, my advice always is like, they better actually be different. Don't just do it because you're having trouble deciding, but the two are very, very similar. Right. God, that was a whole can of worms. I almost certainly shouldn't have opened up for our high schoolers because none of that applies to you yet. That's only once you're in the professional world and a very specific little bit of advice, but there you go. Careful with redundant wild cards. Number seven, learn about your kids by listening. Well said. Learn about your kids by listening. And number eight, just talking about what is beneficial about the in person experience when you can. Strongly agree.

You've heard that advice before in the pod. We always talk about, there may be some virtual schools. You may have to do some virtual, you know, depending on your list size, depending on your budget, it's smart to incorporate that in some way. But if you can do in person for your favorite schools, we do definitely recommend it. And that's also really bears out in our past students' experiences. And that's my time.

[1:10:59] Charlie Murphy: Another episode of Mapping the College Edition produced by Kelly Prendergast. Like and subscribe where you can. Why on earth have you, you, yes, you listener, why haven't you written us a rating and review or written us a review and given us a rating on your podcast platform of choice? You can do it. Come on. You've loved this podcast. This is your fourth podcast you've listened to. You're really into it. Right. And of course, check us out at mtca.com for help with your individual audition process. To my young artists out there mapping their journeys, please trust that you're enough for the right program, exactly as you are right now. Now keep striving. We'll catch you next week.