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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 Kim Shively from Elon University, and specifically the Elon University BFA Acting Program, where she is their head.

[0:30] Charlie Murphy: For our newer listeners, this is another one of our college deep dive episodes, where we explore the landscape of the college theater world and try to demystify this daunting audition process. And as promised, this is another one of our acting focused episodes.

[0:44] Charlie Murphy: Certainly I think worth listening on for our MT focused listeners, since I think it's going to cover a lot of Elon as a whole. And I will just generally try to do that when you hear about a school in any of these acting episodes. I'm going to really try to focus on the whole school, whether they're a little more MT focused or acting focused.

[0:58] Charlie Murphy: But this one I think will be especially helpful for our acting focused listeners. And for those of you who are looking at both types of programs, which I know is a large swath of you. But for those who are like only MT or bust, that could never deign to think about an acting program, and you're interested in Elon, you may want to first listen to our Act One version of this very interview with Alexandra Warren, which is more focused on the MT of it all.

[1:22] Charlie Murphy: Though I think if you're very interested in the school, even as an MT, I would generally recommend listening to both. I think it's a great interview. And definitely today, our takeaways will be very actor focused, since of course, your podcast host is a BFA actor himself. So I always get very excited when we have our BFA acting based episodes, because I get to cook a bit more on these acting topics.

[1:42] Charlie Murphy: I do have 20 years of experience, of course, on the MT process as a coach and an educator. So I think I've really become an expert in that. But I have way more personal experience in my performing life as a non MT actor. So I'm never going to pass up an opportunity to deep dive in some acting focused takeaways when I can.

[1:59] Charlie Murphy: And like I've said in the previous episodes, we are going to try to sprinkle in a few more of these returning acting focused episodes, especially the returning ones for the Act Twos for some of these schools where we've had an MT person in Act One.

[2:12] Charlie Murphy: We have had a decent chunk of acting only programs on already. So my focus is not going to be as much as having Act Twos with the acting only focus programs, where we've already had their program heads on especially. But more I'm going to be trying to have the like, hey, what if you're interested in acting at this school when we've had the MT head? So check those out in the next few months, especially we'll be dropping a bunch of those.

[2:34] Charlie Murphy: Otherwise, I hope you're all having wonderful springs for our seniors. Keep hanging in there during this waiting period. I know the waiting is hard. Of course, it's fun when the results come in and they're positive. But of course, I know not easy when they're not or when they're a wait list and there's more waiting to be done.

[2:50] Charlie Murphy: But just know that there are a lot of results still coming in. And then of course, here we are in the phase of visiting and negotiating and deciding and all of that is really hard. But you're almost through it all. And I will say for our junior listeners watching these seniors in this phase, just like imagine yourself in that place, right? Imagine yourself if you can a year from now deciding between options, because that actually will be you. I know it's hard to believe when I say it, but it will be you a year from now deciding between some great options.

[3:18] Charlie Murphy: And please for our juniors also look out for more information about our upcoming masterclasses. Our summer masterclass week is going to be off the hook this year. I'm declaring it off the hook. We add to it every year in small ways, but this year in some really exciting ways. We do have an official hotel block for all of you coming this year. It's going to be at the New Yorker.

[3:37] Charlie Murphy: We have some great discounted rooms and also we're going to be holding all of our big events there for the first time, which I think is going to help increase the kind of like group bonding community feel of the week for all of you to get to hang out together in the evenings at the hotel. And then the most exciting addition of all is our parent track where we officially have classes for the parents all week as well.

[3:58] Charlie Murphy: We've always had you attend meetings and attend different events throughout the week to attend the Broadway show with us, all those kind of things. But now it's going to be a daily occurrence with your notebooks and your pencils. We're really trying to kickstart the year for you with as much information as humanly possible going in. And I'll say all of these additions are based on feedback from our previous students. Each year we try to really improve the program by listening to what our families say. So if you say, hey, it'd be nice if you had a bit more of this, we're going to try to make sure we have a bit more of this, right? We try to listen when we can.

[4:28] Charlie Murphy: You can sign up for that right now that's available in the shopping cart as we speak. And I would recommend it while we still have the early bird discount. The price will go up as we get closer to this event. And then, of course, also keep your eyes tuned to your inboxes for more information on our spring faculty masterclasses, which are held individually online in the next few weeks.

[4:46] Charlie Murphy: Okay, enough shilling. That certainly feels that way. Now let's get back to our regularly scheduled free content. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with Kim Shively from Elon Acting.

[5:17] Charlie Murphy: And I hope you enjoy this conversation with Kim Shively from Elon Acting.

[5:30] Kim Shively: Thank you so much, Charlie. I'm feeling really great. I'm so glad to be here with you.

[5:50] Charlie Murphy: Happy to have you. I was so glad to get to bump into you in our green room at Unified. And I was like, oh my gosh, we've been hoping to have Elon Acting on the pod. This is so perfect. So what a nice opportunity. You're going to be the beginning, hopefully, of a little bit of a runner of other programs where we've had the MT people on, but we're trying to have the actors on. A lot of our acting listeners and our people who are interested in both are always saying, can you have, I thank you, I appreciate that episode, but I really, I am more interested in acting. So I'd love to hear this perspective. So certainly, we'll focus in there.

[6:15] Kim Shively: Can you give me a little bit of like, just what do we need to know about Kim and your journey to Elon? I mean, I read that six words of a bio there, but in terms of your journey here, what would you want folks to know about you?

[6:27] Kim Shively: Well, I think probably what would be interesting to people is that I grew up in Kentucky and Indiana. I did high school on the north side of Indianapolis, where lots of folks were going to programs like CCM and CMU.

[6:43] Kim Shively: And I was fortunate enough to have early exposure to Shakespeare and plays in the regions and realized that while I really love, excuse me, I love music theater, I also love Shakespeare and what we would refer to as straight plays and was very interested in film and television.

[7:05] Kim Shively: And so Chapman came on my radar. They had a burgeoning BFA at that time in theater performance. And so I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship and do my four years at Chapman. While I was there, I studied abroad in the UK, which had a huge impact on how I saw myself as an artist and how I thought about how I wanted to live my life in the industry.

[7:31] Kim Shively: And then did a pivot and ended up getting a really great coach, Elizabeth Messnick, who now has Elizabeth Messnick acting studio in Los Angeles, which is one of the top acting studios there and does a full, I think a two year Meisner training program, or at least a one year.

[7:50] Kim Shively: But Elizabeth was starting her career as a teacher and was my coach for my MFA program. And I learned a lot about how to audition from Elizabeth. I learned a lot about how auditioning for programs is different than even auditioning for acting jobs.

[8:07] Kim Shively: And she walked me through that really well. And I was so grateful. I ended up going to the FSU Oslo because that was the place where I felt like I would have the opportunity to grow the most. And that's why I wanted to go get my MFA. I just wasn't cooked yet at the end of my training for my BFA.

[8:24] Kim Shively: And you will go on to write, co-author a book on Applied Meisner. Absolutely. Yeah. So there was something about that process that was really interesting to me. Grad school is really hard. I left grad school kind of having the response of maybe I'll use this, maybe I won't.

[8:43] Kim Shively: After the dust settled for my MFA, I really relied on certain aspects of my training and that shaped how I began to work as an actor. I worked pretty quickly moving to New York. I worked in the regions and theater. I worked in commercials very, very quickly. Soap operas were really good to me. I did some TV and started doing voiceovers.

[9:07] Kim Shively: And then I was having more opportunities in Los Angeles. And I met and married my husband in New York. He had been on Broadway for a decade and was interested in doing something else. He had kind of reached his glass ceiling in his career, was playing big leads in the regions and going back to New York and playing supporting leads on Broadway.

[9:31] Kim Shively: And so we ended up moving to Los Angeles and pretty quickly I started coaching friends on auditions and they would book those auditions and then they'd send other friends my way. I got back into classes with Elizabeth Mesnick for a few years and was part of her kind of masterclass group of actors for a few years.

[9:52] Kim Shively: And then was working consistently in making my living as an actor in television and commercials and voiceover and some theater. And then the Elon job fell into my lap. I had a friend who I taught with. I was teaching not as much as I was acting, but what I was realizing is that I really loved teaching acting.

[10:16] Kim Shively: And during those years of coaching, I honed my skills as a teacher. And then along with Dan Calloway, who is up at now at BoCo, Dan and I were teaching in Los Angeles and having a lot of success there.

[10:31] Kim Shively: And he moved to North Carolina to teach at Elon. He called me. They had had a search for the acting position and said it was a failed search. They're having another search. You should put your hat in the ring. I had a new baby. I was like, I'm not moving to North Carolina with an infant.

[10:49] Kim Shively: And I just started looking at what the transition to academia might be. But I didn't throw my hat in the ring that time. And I thought, oh, well, I should probably look at academia. I started to look up Elon and the search was failed again. And he said, Kim, the search was failed a second time. They're waiting for you. They're looking for, you know, someone like you who teaches specifically the point of view aspect of Meisner, which is what my specialty had become by necessity in television. And it was just a it was kind of a meant to be thing. I came. I interviewed. It's the only academic position I've ever applied for.

[11:30] Kim Shively: And now 10 years later, I have stepped into the coordinator position here and just am in love. I love Elon. I love getting to teach acting here. I get to teach at a really high level. And that was important for me because I don't want to teach graduate students.

[11:49] Kim Shively: I think working with them would be a lot of fun. I'm just not interested in in teaching or leading an MFA program. I really love what I get to do. And because the industry favors youth right now, I think it's really important that we train them well, train them at a high level.

[12:05] Kim Shively: And then, you know, they've got their careers ahead of them. And I've got students now that graduated eight or nine years ago who are reaching out and talking to me about auditioning for MFA programs. And the reason why we get MFAs now is a little bit different than it was even 20 some years ago when I went to get my MFA.

[12:24] Kim Shively: Maybe a little bit more directly to teach than just the idea of I haven't got enough training.

[12:29] Kim Shively: Absolutely. Like I think 22, 23 years ago, our training or even gosh, I mean, 30 years ago, our training was really focused in the in the BFA and BAs in like getting you ready for your career, but also laying a foundation.

[12:46] Kim Shively: And the idea was that if you were going to go on and really work in regional theater, you would go on and get an MFA or if you really wanted to make those industry connections and get very specific specialized training, you would go on to that MFA.

[13:02] Kim Shively: And the MFA is, of course, the University and Residential Theater Association that was formed in the mid 20th century was formed to be that feeder for regional theaters with actors equity because our country had Milwaukee Rep and the Guthrie and all of these like American Players Theater, the Oslo Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We had Old Globe. We had all of these big theaters that needed companies to support them. And that was how.

[13:49] Charlie Murphy: Welcome back to Mapping The College Audition. Today, we are diving into the world of acting at Elon University with Kim Shively, who is an Associate Professor of Performing Arts there. Kim, thank you for joining us today.

[14:19] Kim Shively: Thank you for having me, Charlie. I'm excited to be here.

[14:39] Charlie Murphy: Let's start with the type of student that you typically see in the Elon Acting program. What are some characteristics or qualities that you look for in an ideal candidate?

[14:59] Kim Shively: We really look for students who are passionate about storytelling and have a strong desire to grow as artists. They should be open to exploration and willing to take risks in their work. We value collaboration, so being a team player is also essential.

[15:29] Charlie Murphy: That makes a lot of sense. Can you tell us a bit about the learning abroad opportunities, particularly in London? How does that enhance the students' experience?

[15:49] Kim Shively: Absolutely! Our students have the chance to study abroad in London, which is a fantastic experience. They immerse themselves in the rich theatrical culture of the city, attending performances and participating in workshops with industry professionals. It really broadens their perspective and deepens their understanding of the craft.

[16:09] Charlie Murphy: That sounds incredible. Now, let's dive deeper into the Meisner technique. What does it mean to study Meisner at Elon, and how is it integrated into the curriculum?

[16:29] Kim Shively: Studying Meisner at Elon involves a lot of practice and repetition. We focus on the fundamentals of listening and responding truthfully in the moment. It's about building a strong foundation in acting that allows students to connect deeply with their scene partners and the material.

[16:39] Charlie Murphy: And how do you think that prepares them for the industry?

[16:49] Kim Shively: It prepares them by instilling a sense of authenticity in their performances. The ability to be present and responsive is crucial in the industry, and Meisner training helps students develop those skills.

[16:59] Charlie Murphy: Great insights! Now, can you walk us through the audition process for the Elon Acting program? What can prospective students expect?

[17:19] Kim Shively: Sure! The audition process typically involves a monologue and possibly a song. We look for students to showcase their individuality and authenticity. It's important for them to choose pieces that resonate with them personally.

[17:29] Charlie Murphy: That’s really helpful. Are there any common mistakes that you see students make during the audition process?

[17:39] Kim Shively: Yes, one common mistake is not being fully prepared. Students should practice their pieces thoroughly and be ready to take direction. Another mistake is choosing material that doesn't truly reflect who they are as artists.

[17:49] Charlie Murphy: Those are valuable tips. What advice would you give to students who are preparing for their auditions?

[17:59] Kim Shively: I would advise them to really connect with their material and understand the characters they are portraying. Also, practice in front of others to get comfortable performing. Lastly, remember to breathe and enjoy the process!

[18:09] Charlie Murphy: Fantastic advice, Kim. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today about the Elon Acting program.

[18:19] Kim Shively: Thank you for having me, Charlie. It was a pleasure!

[18:29] Charlie Murphy: And to our listeners, if you have any questions about the college audition process, feel free to reach out to us at mailbag@mappingthecollegeaudition.com.

[18:39] Charlie Murphy: If you're interested in working with MTCA for help with your individualized preparation for your college audition journey, please check us out at mtca.com or on social media.

[18:49] Charlie Murphy: Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time!

[27:38] Kim Shively: This modern usage, and we boil it down to very simple things: need, action, and point of view. So in that first semester, our students are coming in and they are simply learning how to impulse freely and let go of the social self so that they can one day play an action. And they're learning that through the tenants of Meisner's original repetition exercise. And then we grow it into the independent activity and history of relationship. So they do that in their first semester. Then in their second semester, they go into what is called like our Stanislavski unit, which is also very rooted in Michael Chekhov technique. And that's taught by Julian Stakhevich. So that's acting two, and they get mixed up again.

So it's actors and MTs, but they're in a different configuration. And then they're working on how do they really play that action? How do they have a need and sculpt a need? What the Russians call the must have, like how do they begin to learn about what an objective is and how to personalize it into a need? And then in acting three, beginning of their sophomore year, I teach acting three. And that's where we put those things together and add layer in point of view, which is how your character sees the world, which is the thing that colors how you play that action and how you have that need and what the need feels like all the time. They're really learning about who they are in and who their dramatic imagination is without relying on any lived experience or personal trauma, because I have two degrees in acting.

So I am not equipped to help you process your trauma. That's not going to be, that's not what I'm going to do. That's what the podcast is for. We help you with that. No. Right. That's what the podcast is for. But my research is about how that's not sustainable and our dramatic imaginations are infinite. So how do we help them learn about their humanity and then be able to express that fully with their dramatic imagination? Then—

[29:52] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. There's an acting course.

[29:54] Kim Shively: Yeah. Then acting. So what happens is music theater students go on and they take music theater performance, which is taught by Brian Kremer. I taught it last year while he was on sabbatical. Brian is like, we have been, we worked to develop it to be an extension for music theater about like, how do you act the song? And Brian just continues to grow it. And we were, we talked about it this morning on my commute in, talking about like that specific aspect. For the actors then they're moving into, they've been taking since their first semester, they take a dynamic instrument course, which is where they learn about their own personal dynamic instrument. And that is the voice and movement aspect of how we speak on stage, how we use breath.

And we start to think about how we utilize effective tension and what tension is not effective because we're held responsible for everything we bring on stage. The audience says like, I, what you bring on stage, I create a character out of, and they call that character. So we want to make sure that actors are making informed decisions about that. Then they're going to take what's called vocal production two and movement two. Vocal production two, they're learning about the international phonetic alphabet. They're learning about what a general American sound is and their own native sounds and their bodies and how to switch between those. They're also learning about how to have structured breath, how to be able to support text in a safe and sustainable way.

And then in movement two, they're starting neutral mask work. They're learning about how their bodies move on stage and what they look like and how they operate. Then they're moving into VP three and movement three after acting three. So during acting three, that fall semester of sophomore year for the actors, they're taking script analysis where they're learning how to read like a director. And then in acting three, they're learning how to read and analyze like an actor and they're taking the independent activity and they're using someone else's words. So they're learning those two things at the same time, which sounds like it could be confusing, but what it actually does is it really gets them to separate out the skillset for being an actor in analysis and the skillset for directing as an analysis.

In sophomore spring, then they're taking directing. So they're working on one piece of text for that whole year with play script, the script analysis course, and directing. They're doing that throughout that arc of the sophomore year. And in the spring, they're taking VP three, which is where they begin to use heightened language and text, and they learn how the breath and sound work together to articulate and use all of that heightened language. And then how to then bring it down for a variety of mediums, like on camera, where you don't want to have all of your plosives, where you don't want to articulate like you would for a, even a hundred seat house or a 600 seat house. And then they're taking movement three and they're moving into more LeCocq based movement and more, more commedia movement and stylistic movement.

And that happens while they take directing. So they've had this like arc of experience in those first two years that give them the foundation. And the way I like to think of it as this, a lot of people talk about tools and we're going to put a lot of things in your toolkit. And I think that's fine. But my question is if someone's like, "Hey Kim, here's a toolbox, go build me this deck," but they've never taught me how to hammer a nail in. They've never taught me how to measure. They've never taught me how to plane or trim a piece of wood, then I'm not going to be very good with the tools in my toolkit. And what Elon focuses on so well is the foundational acting technique. So our students by this end of their fall semester of their sophomore year, they can play an action.

They can, they know how to have a need and how to wire themselves for it. And they also can have a point of view that informs all of that. And they understand how to dramatically put those things together to have the tension necessary to really impulse freely shape those impulses into actions. That's the, they're very good nail hammers and measurers and then they can go apply it.

[34:30] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. So when you give them tools, they know how to use them.

[34:33] Kim Shively: Yeah. I wonder a couple of things. I'm just, I'll double click on that. You mentioned a wonderful cogent explanation of the curriculum, the dynamic instruments. Is that basically a voice and speech class, or are you saying that's going to have movement mixed in?

[34:45] Kim Shively: It has movement as well. So it's voice speed, but it's really a, it's a voice and movement class and it's helping them integrate all one big breath movement body to, because the reality is, and this is a, what we would call like an anti-Hellenistic viewpoint, the Hellenistic meaning like the Romans and the Greeks, there was this idea that the brain and the body were separate somehow. And what science has told us is that we're incredibly integrated and what that class does so beautifully. And Kirby Wall is the one who shaped it. And he shaped it with like, he's an expert in like mind body centering. And so he shaped it to help integrate the actors. And that has remained a pure focus is that we are really thinking about like, you are, you are not just a brain on top of a body.

You are an integrated person and here's the science to back it up. And here's how you're going to learn about all of those implementations in that first class. So they're, they've got the anatomy coloring book and they're learning about the structure of the body while they're learning the functions and how they work together for the actor.

[35:55] Charlie Murphy: That's so cool. I mean, I definitely had that experience a lot in my career of going, oh man, the amount of, you know, viewpoints or things that have gone, I'm actually using this in my voice. Now I'm using this, like that you go, like I'm doing something that was a physical action or exercise, and now I'm really using it more vocally and vice versa. So that's cool to start with that integration. The other question I had, just as for those who are interested in Shakespeare, we've mentioned it. And if you're an actor who really likes that, where does that sort of fit in, whether it's specifically Shakespeare or just let's say styles in general, if I'm interested in Greek and you mentioned commedia, but are there, is there a class specifically where you're going to dive into that?

[36:27] Kim Shively: Absolutely. So then what happens is we get that foundation laid in those first two years. And then in the fall of the junior year, the third year, our students in the acting BFA are going to London and they are going as a cohort. They are going to the Theater Academy of London, which was started by FSU. I went there during my graduate school. It was one of my study abroad experiences. Mark Wheatley, who started it, he was the artistic director of Theatrica Complicite. He wrote and devised Street of Crocodiles. He is still running, administrating and running it. And he's done such a phenomenal job. And our students are going over and taking Shakespeare and combat, which are core courses for the acting BFA and their Shakespeare is Shakespeare.

It's Shakespeare, the way it needs to be taught for American actors, because in the UK, Shakespeare, they are beginning to see Shakespeare at school. They're going to the old, or they're going to the globe to see Shakespeare. They're having a lot of experiences with Shakespeare in the UK. In the United States, they may not be, they may only be reading it in their English class, which makes them, makes most of them like think of Shakespeare as something like your vegetables that you have to take it and it's good for you, but it tastes terrible or it's a big pill you have to swallow and it's boring. Because Shakespeare was never meant to be read. It was meant to be heard. It was meant to be experienced.

So there are a few things that happen. They go to London, they take Shakespeare. We offer Shakespeare on campus every other year so that those laterals are getting to take it. And then we have a Shakespeare production every other year in our season. Then we also, they work on the Greeks in earnest a few times. They work on it in some of their voice and movement classes. And then they also, their first scenes in acting three are John Barton's versions of the Greeks, which are these series of one acts. There were 10 originally written. They were commissioned for the RSC. They were performed in rep, three different performances, and you could go see them all. And we do scenes from the Greeks, but the language is really prescient.

It's easy to understand. It's great. It gets them introduced to a heightened language. And then we do something that is Greek. And what I mean by that is it's got a chorus. It's using mythic kind of circumstances. We do that every other year as well. So on the non-Shakespeare year, we're doing something that we classify as a Greek, but it might be, we did a Paradise Lost by Aaron Shields adaptation of Milton's poem Paradise Lost. That's incredibly dramatic, postmodern feminist and like has a chorus and has all of the epic kind of nature of the Greeks that we're going for.

[39:25] Charlie Murphy: I love it. And like you said, with the hammering and the nails and measuring it, there's something about also giving tools to adapt styles, even if you haven't done every single style that you go, even if you're doing mostly TV and film or even that there are, the skill of being able to adjust, I think is really helpful to be like, oh, tonally this, the office feels different than whatever the pit or whatever you're auditioning for. You go there, what it is to take a technique of what is truthful, but then also be able to make an adjustment, whether it's Shakespeare or Greek or whatever, there are some skills that you have to learn in school.

[40:49] Kim Shively: Absolutely. And I love you use that analogy, because one of the things we can do is when they come back from London, they're going to take what we call acting six and acting six is advanced scene study and it's preparation for their senior experience. And one of the things they're going to do there is learn how to find the world point of view for the pit, the world point of view for this particular Shakespeare play, the world point of view for this 99 seat theater, kind of storefront Chicago theater play. And then they're going to learn how to interact with that and do their scene work at a really high level while they're preparing their scenes and their monologues for their senior capstone experience.

It's the do at a really high level that I feel like sometimes gets missed because you will get out into the world and you will realize, hey, totally I'm missing this audition. And so it's not that students aren't able to maybe make the adjustment and go, I need to make a stylistic change. It's just, can I still use some acting technique underneath it? Or am I just going to be giving a facade of, well, you basically gave me the pit, but you weren't still acting because you were really mimicking or doing something different because you're like, I recognize I have to change styles, but can you still have a technique? Like foundational acting principles. And the thing is we also, I hope that they, they begin to understand within their technique when you're doing three camera sitcom acting, you don't really need objective. It's baked into the text. You need really clear point of view character kind of stuff. You need that. And you need to know how to play bold action.

[41:27] Kim Shively: And have reversals. And when you're doing commercials, it's nothing but like, who you are on that day and an objective. And that's the, do they understand how to pick and choose what parts of the technique are most important for the medium that they find themselves?

[41:46] Charlie Murphy: Well, it leads me perfectly. My last question about this was just, you had mentioned, you know, you give them this Meisner sandwich, it looks like in the first three classes. And then you said, hey, I challenged them, or most of our students will leave with their own version of an acting technique. How is that? Is that something that is mentored or that you're helping them be like, what works with you? Or how do you create your own acting technique from what you're getting?

[42:05] Kim Shively: It's day by day. So what it looks like is right now, I'm text coaching Romeo and Juliet, and they're coming in. And as we sit down and work on the piece of text, we're looking at how does acting technique fit into Shakespeare? And what parts of your technique are you using? What parts of your voice training are you using? But how do you get an objective on a piece of text? Because doing that with Shakespeare, I couldn't do that till I was probably 25 or 26. And I wasn't doing it consistently until my 30s. And like, I still look back, I played Gertrude last summer in Hamlet, and I was, there were moments where I was like, I mean, I was always doing the push pull with it. Because of being gravitationally pulled toward the poetry or that more of your focus is on the language as opposed to being, what was preventing the objective for you?

Gertrude's really hard. I hadn't worked on a lot of adult pieces of text. I played Portia for years. I played Julia. I played lots of the young women roles. They're quite simple. And I used to think I was really good at Shakespeare. And then I got Gertrude's big speech about the willow and the brook and Ophelia's death. And I was like, oh, it's nothing but imagery. How do you deliver that objective with that imagery? And Hamlet in 2026 is going to be cut and going to have a very specific theme that a director is sussing out. So how do you fit into that director's theme, play that objective on that really dense text? Because we just, we don't tend to give young actors those harder, bigger pieces of text.

And so I just swam and played Portia and was like, look at what a beautiful Shakespearean I am. And everyone was like, look at how great you are. So that's an example of, I'm able to talk to them about that even as I'm learning myself. I did not have those conversations eight years ago because I was still playing Portia.

[44:01] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. That's so interesting. Okay. As we move to wrapping this section of it, I just want to talk about, you've mostly gotten us through the curriculum, but how do you prepare your students for the launch into the business? So let's talk about them prepping for actually whether that's being agents, managers, casting directors, all that kind of stuff.

[44:18] Kim Shively: We start day one when they get here as first years, because we do an intensive at the beginning of the year where we're focusing on either Shakespeare, maybe next year we're going to focus on styles and heightened high comedy styles. But we do an intensive the first weekend of school where we're getting them together and they are working. Then we have something called professional practices, which is a dedicated time on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:25 to 5:25. On Tuesdays, we're meeting and they are doing their monologues for one another and getting feedback. They are, we're having a self-tape workshop. This year we brought in people like Lana Young and Andres Munar in previous years. We're bringing in experts in the field who are working actors, who are also coaches, who are able to talk to them about what self-tape is from different perspectives.

We're bringing in industry guests that they're engaging with. We just had a weekend intensive with Lisa Cordelione, who's a filmmaker and raises her own money. She started as an actor, but she is now a producer and writer and is generating her own content. So they're really starting from day one. When they are seniors, our hope is that every year they're making new contacts and making new relationships. Then when they're seniors, they are having this casting series where in the fall they are filming their showcase and having it edited and having great sound with it. And that includes short clips that are really fun, that show what they do really well, really quickly. Monologues, again, that are dynamic and that show who they are.

So they've got that work. Also in these four years, we've got this relationship with cinema and television arts where we're meeting with them and having a pizza night and the students are all standing up and saying, this is my movie, this is my movie. And then the actors are standing up and saying, I'm so-and-so and this is my hometown and these are the kind of projects I'm interested in. So that already first years, I had a first year who came in, we were working on something else and he was like, I've got to run because I've got a meeting and I'm going to be in a thesis film. And those thesis films have budgets and it gets them on set, it gets them experience. So I'm encouraging them when you have a free weekend, you should be a PA, you should be getting used to set culture, then you should be building up your creative people that you want to make things with.

So by the time they're seniors, they've already got tape, they've already got really good real material, but they're honing in on working at a high level and having these clips that are really well produced and that look great. Then we're bringing to campus casting directors and casting agents and agents to work with them. They do workshops. We had Mark Sachs, Erica Jensen, Allison Brennan from Gray Talent, Liz Frazier from Carnahan Casting. So we had them all in different times and different weekends working with the seniors. They're developing their, they're getting their headshots and resumes, they've got their websites together. These are all part of that senior capstone. They're producing it together with some faculty oversight so that they're having the experience of being producers if they haven't already started producing their own content.

Then we bring in an accountant that specializes in accounting and money for actors and artists. So they're starting to learn about how to account, how to do those things. I also encourage them strongly to take the personal finance class, which is a one credit class that's offered a few different times throughout the senior year. And they leave that with like a budget matrix and all of that. I mean, so Elon, the great thing about Elon is you can find those classes within the core curriculum that are going to suit you and what makes you unique. And that's what I'm most proud of in the acting program is we are not producing Stepford actors. We are able to find the uniqueness of each individual and they are able to express that fully so that when they leave, they're not, they don't look just like everybody else.

They don't play their actions just like everybody else. They don't express themselves. They are each finding what makes them an individual. And I really love, it's credited to Miles Davis, but he evidently, he said something like, it takes a long time to sound like yourself. And I think what the journey that we do here gets them to is they don't walk away with original Broadway cast recording syndrome where they're like, I push play, I do this thing and you can't change me. They're very flexible. They take direction really well from a variety of different voices and they, they have an idea of who they are, but they also have the understanding that they will change and that they should. And that that's a beautiful thing.

And we try to emphasize that in the first year, the people around you are not going to make the same mistakes they're making today. And you have to give them the ability to learn and grow. And you have to give yourself that same grace and generosity.

[49:54] Charlie Murphy: It's beautifully said. And it's a difficult balance. I know for our auditioning actors too, the balance of how much point of view and specificity of what I know is myself, and then also the openness to go, but I'm not holding it so tightly that it can't change and that it won't be flexible and all those things.

[50:06] Kim Shively: Absolutely. Well, and that's the, that's the key is what parts that you think are your point of view that you're actually using as armor to protect yourself? Because the other thing is we're looking for a certain amount of vulnerability and flexibility in the classes that we are bringing in. So occasionally I'll get fussed out by someone who's like, you didn't take so-and-so and they're going to Juilliard. And I'm like, that's great. Juilliard is the right place for them. And they're like, but how could you not take them? I'm like, cause it just wasn't the right match.

[50:43] Charlie Murphy: Okay. Now we're getting dangerously close into the second half of the show where we're going to talk about exactly that. So let's take a quick little break and then we'll talk about the auditions a little bit more back in a flash.

[50:48] Kim Shively: All right. We are back with Kim Shively and we began, we began the second half anyway. So one of the big questions I'm going to ask is what you're looking for in an audition. Why don't we just dive right into that? Just of like what, when you are meeting a young actor and you're seeing ideally some monologues, right? What is happening in the audition experience that would make you say this person feels like that fit that you mentioned versus this person, even if I think they're really talented, does not seem like a fit?

[51:15] Kim Shively: I think there's a certain flexibility and desire to learn and grow. I'm looking for people who can take adjustments. I'm looking for people who can breathe or we can get them to a place of breath cause they're going to come in nervous. I understand that. Um, but, uh, definitely material matters. And here's what I mean by material matters. I don't want to see 18 year olds do Shakespeare because then I'm seeing the strength of whoever worked with them. I'm not seeing how they bring themselves to the work. Most usually there are some exceptions and I know people love Shakespeare, but like, please don't do Shakespeare for us. It just tells me that you can't follow directions. Um, cause we ask for no Shakespeare.

Um, I want to see different aspects of their temperament and personality that may mean they do two serious pieces or cause it doesn't have to, or two funny pieces, but they're bringing in different aspects of who they are. I want to hear what their voice is. I don't want to hear like, ah, this is my acting voice when I talk. I don't want to hear that. I want to hear who they are and how they bring themselves to the work.

[52:24] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm looking for a certain amount. We are looking for a certain amount of flexibility. And when you say flexibility, what does it, what does a Kim Shively adjustment look like? So what kind of, you don't have to reveal all your tricks, but what happens in an audition room where we might go, I'm going to throw something at you. And what are you looking for in that change?

[52:39] Kim Shively: I'm looking for them to be able to follow my direction because usually what's happened is they've planned every way they're going to say something. And it's so rigid in them. And what I'm seeing is like a structure that is not, that doesn't breathe. And I want to see how they breathe in that moment. And so I'll ask them things like, hey, forget everything you've ever, you've ever learned about this monologue. Who are you talking to? What do you want from them? If everything goes right, what do you want from them? And then I'll, we'll begin to work from, like, if you want them to listen and you're screaming at them from the beginning, first of all, dramatically, you're not giving yourself anywhere to go.

But second of all, like you're not really asking them the question, like you want to know the answer. So I'll, so it might be like, just really ask this question or what is that moment before? And how does it live in you so that you take that breath and say that thing? And how much are you planning it? Or, or you know what I mean? I'm really looking for where's the human in there and do they respond well to us in the room? We also have the sample class we give them where we get to see them play and get to see who they are. And so we're, we're taking information all day. But like I tell them at the beginning of the day, we just want to know who you are, but also you get to know who we are. I love Elon, but Elon's not for everyone. And it's really important when they come on campus that they feel how they feel because we do our best work when we feel secure.

[54:06] Charlie Murphy: Yeah. Well, can we talk about the different ways that you can audition for Elon? So you have traditionally been an only on-campus people and yet I met you at Chicago Unified. This was the first year?

[54:22] Kim Shively: Yes. Brian and I've worked, we've been working for years to get music theater and acting to Moonifieds and Unifieds and out. I think part of the reason there's been a hesitancy in previous leadership is because the university really does sell itself. And when you come to campus, you know, real quick, if this is a place you want to be or a place you don't want to be. I have a dear friend who I coached. So I coached people for auditions for years ago. And I have a dear friend whose daughter came and auditioned for Elon and she got on campus and she was like, not for me. That was my first engagement with Elon. I coached her for an audition and she was like, I did not like that. And I love Elon. So two people who love each other and have lots of alignment in areas might have a different response to training.

[55:17] Kim Shively: Um, so I think that there's a magic in being able to come see our campus and be on our campus and for us to spend a day together and get to know each other and to take tours and get to talk to all the students. But we want to cast a broader net; we want to get to know more people, and we want to be able to meet folks that we otherwise may not have been able to make that decision, and they can still have that same experience after having been admitted, and that happens too, and that's going to be the case this year. So, um, we went to Unifieds this year; we're going to continue Unifieds and Moonifieds. Um, we're really excited about that opportunity to meet people and get to know them. Um, for me, it's a change of mindset because I don't know who's really interested in us and who's throwing spaghetti at the wall.

So I think when you come to audition for us at Unifieds, like, know who we are, do your research so that you know what questions to ask. Also, like, we're a college, and a lot of people I would ask, "What do you—why are you auditioning for Elon? And what else are you auditioning for? What are you hoping for out of your university experience?" And they would say, "I don't know." And that for me is a big warning sign because you coming to Elon, which I love Elon, or going to Pace, which I love Pace, I have lots of friends who teach there, you're going to have very different experiences. Yeah, and you need to know, do you want to go to a conservatory, or do you want to come to a conservatory-style training in the liberal arts?

They're two very different things; both are great. But like, if I ask someone where else are you auditioning for, and they're like, "I'm auditioning for Elon and Pace and Juilliard and DePaul," and my brain begins to go, "What? Why? What do you want out of college?" And I know they're using the spaghetti method, and for me, that's not Elon. Students aren't real spaghetti method; you don't want to be this wall that's getting splatted on. Nope, who wants to be this wall? No, I don't. So that's where I mean my spidey sense is like we might not be the right match.

[56:36] Kim Shively: One thing I missed in the top half is we often talk about cost. I mean, Elon is not a cheap university. No, we're not. Yeah, and we're a young program; like, we're just graduating our 25th class from the acting BFA. So we don't have the years of endowments and all of the scholarships and the partnerships that allow us to offer the scholarships that we would love to be able to offer. But our institution is more expensive, and so that means that, um, I think that also is part of why we have the student population we do because we do have presidential scholarships; we have Elon College Fellows and Honors Fellows, um, and they are part of our population in our program. Meaning, if I'm reading that correctly, more of the scholarship money that you might potentially receive from Elon is going to be academic as opposed to talent-based, you're saying?

We don't have huge talent-based scholarships for the actors, but you might get a big academic scholarship, which is why I may be having more academic students. Yes, we're building them up, but we don't have the ability to give full scholarships for the acting BFA; we don't have the ability to give even half scholarships. Um, that's a dream, and we're continuing to work toward it, but that definitely is something that folks should take into consideration. And just to read into the record for those too lazy to Google it, looks like tuition is about $52,051, um, in terms of tuition specifically, um, which of course maybe is brought down by big presidential scholarships and other things.

[58:00] Kim Shively: Well, I think the difference is that we—that people might think of about Elon is other institutions will mark up or balloon what they cost and then take off so that they equal what Elon is, and it feels like you've got the scholarship. Like, the psychology is, "But look at this big scholarship I'm getting." We don't do that. Right, there's schools that say we cost ninety thousand dollars, but nobody pays more than 45, and you go, "Wait a second, so you cost 45? That's what you mean?" Exactly. And so we're not—we don't do that kind of like false inflation and write-off. Like, that's just—it's for us, it's why Elon has stayed so stable through all of the kind of like crazy financial stuff. You guys got all those marketing classes and budgeting; you got to take some of those.

You could be selling yourself a little better. We could do a little inflation; it wouldn't be the end of the world. Um, I'd love to talk a little bit about the theatrical intimacy. So, um, could you—for those we've had a couple discussions of it on the podcast, but really only maybe two times this has come up—um, specifically, I think people who maybe have taken your class and talked about, um, their interest in it. Can you just define what that theatrical industry training is and sort of how it's used in your work?

[59:46] Kim Shively: I'm a guiding faculty for Theatrical Intimacy Education, which is, um, it was the first research collective. There are a few different organizations that are out there training intimacy choreographers and coordinators, but we're really—most of us are academics; all of us are researchers, and we're using that research to make us all better at being in the room together. So I am an intimacy choreographer, intimacy coordinator; our students are trained in these best practices of boundaries and consent, and why that's important for me is everyone does their best work when they feel secure. And our students are getting to learn as they're learning how to advocate for themselves in the room, how to articulate their boundaries, how to notice when they become activated because our—you know, American culture is built on the easy-to-work-with actor.

The easy-to-work-with actor historically has said yes to everything. What this work does is it helps me redefine what an easy-to-work-with actor is practically every day. So they're learning how to recognize those things through having very specific tools that they're practicing on campus and all of their environments in the department. They're also, um, redefining—like, being an easy-to-work-with actor is showing up on time and bringing your pencil and being off book and like having all of your tools that you need to be effective at being in the room, being ready. Yeah, um, so yeah, Elon was the first institution to have a two-day workshop weekend in this work. Yeah, um, and we're really proud of that, and we continue to practice it in everything we do because I think we have a responsibility to prepare people for the industry that is, and not every environment you're going to walk into will have an intimacy choreographer without you asking for it.

Not every environment you'll walk into has an intimacy coordinator without you asking for it, or the people you have working there may not have a good process; they may not have a process. But they're going to leave—our students are going to leave prepared for the industry that is, but also they're going to be shaping the industry that is to come. For me, that's why training leaders for this industry is so important.

[1:02:11] Kim Shively: And that you want to get to train leaders for the industry, I think that is deeply true. Do you feel like the, uh, industry itself is—you know, there was a rapid increase in theatrical intimacy coordinators as a position, you know, and then you sort of would see like, okay, now some of the regional theaters maybe we're trying to make that like their stage combat slash intimacy person if they're trying to. But do you see that continuing to increase? You see that—how do you sort of see the future of the, you know, a regional theater? Let's say Broadway we imagine will continue because they have the finances, but as it sort of trickles down, do you see that being something that will become a true standard across the board or that will maintain, you know, in terms of at the level it is? How do you sort of see the growth of theatrical intimacy?

[1:03:01] Kim Shively: Well, I think one of the things that's happening is we're training so many students. This movement for theatrical intimacy education and boundaries and consent in the states arts are housed in our universities and colleges. We don't have government-subsidized theater, so the arts grow out of—and most of our exciting work that we see and enjoy on Broadway that we're not like importing from places with government-subsidized arts is grown out of the colleges and universities. So my thought is that, um, we've trained so many now that the culture is beginning to shift, and I do, but I think, yeah, I think we'll have intimacy choreographers for theater and intimacy coordinators for film where we need that.

Yeah, and I think as people become more educated, um, Europe is doing this a lot better. I've gotten to go to Germany the past—I feel like the past five years I've spoken at the Berlin Olli; I've gotten to be in Europe where they are understanding the cultural shift. And so it's their producers who are getting trained; it's their lawyers who are getting trained, um, especially in their film and television. Here, I think the actors are getting trained in it enough that they're starting to learn when to ask for it, and they're also—we're training stage managers, so production is holding it more. Yep, um, so I think the end game is when it's needed. If you're doing Spring Awakening, if you're doing Strange Loop, if you're doing, um, Frankie and Johnny, you're gonna have an intimacy choreographer.

If you're doing a TV show like, um, Heated Rivalries or Bridgerton, you're gonna have an intimacy coordinator. Do you need it for kisses and handholds and basic canoodling if the actor asks for it? Right, but not every show has stage combat. If there's a push, that's all we're trained enough; we probably can handle this between.

[1:05:01] Kim Shively: But it's interesting the different levels it may house. I love that you're talking about stage managers. You know, basically, would we have the way you have dance captains and fight—like, is there a version where, you know, and on off-off-off Broadway theaters often, like, the stage manager is trained as a fire marshal just to save you like 100 bucks or whatever you get from? I think the power dynamics are enough different because intimacy lives in our everyday lives that we—that we—it needs to be someone who is not on the peer level with the actor. I think it's got to live in stage management or in production in some way. Yeah, um, and that's complicated in a university setting because stage managers are students, right?

Um, so for them to hold that is complicated as well, so we don't recommend that because there is a liability with it. Um, but each and each—each situation is unique, and I never get angry if I hear two actors who are like, "We didn't want an intimacy coordinator." I'm not angry about it because they didn't want it, right? And the process—the intimacy coordinator is there to help the process be better, not to make it weird, right? And so I think when the industry starts to dictate the demands of it or the role, the position dictates it, it can interfere with actor process and with the creative process and the director's vision.

[1:06:04] Kim Shively: Yeah, it should always be there to be a support. I love that, and I love the idea of redefining what an easy-to-work-with actor is in terms of knowing your own boundaries as opposed to just saying yes to everything is really—it's really smart. Um, I know I'm assuming consciously you are out. Can we end with just a little bit of advice to the parents in the process? Um, we always have sort of just like for our parent listeners how they can best support their kids. You, of course, now a parent yourself, so how do you sort of advise parents who are guiding their children through this process?

[1:06:30] Kim Shively: I think that first of all, to parents who are believing in the arts enough to support your children having a degree, my first thing to say is thank you. Thank you for supporting your children; thank you for believing in arts, which are humanities in action and the core to—as technology advances, the thing that helps me put down the news and turn away from things is that I get to engage with artists every day in the messiness and the beauty and the complications of when human beings are struggling with how to be human and make something out of nothing. So thank you for that. Um, I believe in a liberal arts education that centers something like a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the studies of acting and musical theater and dance.

And why I do is because these are shaping dynamic humans with the soft skill set that the world needs. And yes, you can look at all of our alumni, and we've got people on Broadway, and we've got people on streaming series, and we've got people on television and commercials and in the regions and theater, and I am proud of all of them. But I am equally proud of students like Taylan Smith, who just started her master's in, um, in public policy at Columbia and who's been working at—I'm going to mess up the name—but essentially the human reproductive rights organization, that big international organization, um, and who's an amazing talent and who worked in all these equity contracts and realized that there was something else that was exciting and that her BFA is something that she uses all the time in doing that important work.

I'm married to a Broadway vet who, um, who could work all the time as an actor, but he loves being a commercial appraiser. And part of what he attributes to that success and his success in that role is that he—every time he sits down with a new order and he writes these like 500 and 600-page documents and reports that people use, he doesn't have a roadmap, and it's his acting training; it's his analysis that makes him able to create a map to tell these stories and to be able to go out into places that sometimes are remote and talk to people that he wouldn't regularly need to talk to. So I believe in what we do, and my advice to you all is to...

[1:09:06] Kim Shively: Don't get caught up in the hype of a name. Because we hope you love Elon and we want you to come to Elon and love us the way we love you. But I also think it's really important that there might be a beautiful bachelor program. My best friend Laura Reichard is at USC Upstate training actors and those actors are so talented. One of them is getting ready to go to the Old Globe for his MFA. She's doing amazing work at that small local college that's really off the radar for people. Find the place that your child feels like they can be themselves and they can get the training. And find people who are speaking in ways that they're not selling you a bill of goods like making promises that your child's going to be on Broadway.

The most we can promise is that we are going to train them in a technique well. And that if we commit to them, we are going to see them through to the finish. Pay attention to your gut. Also your intellect, but your gut. And really pick up the phone, talk to people that you're asking to entrust your child's training with. Because it is a responsibility. So that's my advice. And just thank you.

[1:10:28] Charlie Murphy: Extremely well said. Kim Shively, it was a pleasure getting to chat with you. Thanks so much for the time today.

[1:10:31] Kim Shively: Charlie, thank you for having me. And thanks to MTCA and all the good work you're doing.

[1:10:42] Charlie Murphy: Yes, yes, yes. Love that conversation with Kim. Anytime I get to go a bit deeper on curriculum stuff, you know I get excited. You get to see like that particular nerdom that would have been me as a professor in a different life. I mean still possible life, I guess. But I do love a curricular deep dive. Lots of great takeaways. Let's dive in. I'm not even going to promise it's going to be a short takeaway section since I was successful in keeping this interview a bit shorter, which is our new goal. So I'm now going to luxuriate in the takeaways. I'm not going to stress if they go long. Okay, let's hit the biggest takeaway first, which is one of the interesting things I was thinking about with having Elon acting on the pod, which is that question we have with our acting majors a lot, or especially our acting majors who maybe are somewhat interested in MT schools, or maybe those students who really do that 50-50 mix of MT and acting, or even those MTs who are interested in a couple of acting schools, which is that big question of how do they think about whether they should audition for one program or audition for both in the instances where they have two different majors.

Now it's worth recognizing this is a really different decision at different programs since sometimes you can hit two programs in one audition, and this is true for schools like Carnegie Mellon or Ithaca, where with one process you might audition for musical theater and then be automatically considered for acting, or in the case with some schools you even may have the choice of major between the two if you're admitted to both. You could audition for both, get admitted to both, and then have a choice, right? And then with some schools they will be entirely separate application processes and entirely separate auditions, right? You won't necessarily have to fully apply to the university twice, but you might have to send in different supplemental material and go through two different processes to be seen by the MT program and the acting program, right?

And then they may arrive at that decision with no coordination at all with each other. So again, you could still be accepted to both programs, but no coordination between them, right? And then of course there's everywhere in between as well. So I talked about two polls, but there's all the different schools in between. You know, with some schools it might not be an automatic consideration. You might just audition for MT, but then you'll find the professor say, hey, you want to go into the other room? Have you seen, have you thought about the acting program? My friend who runs the acting program is really great and you've got some great monologues over there, right? And they may send you over there.

That may not be an official automatic thing, but it may still happen, right? There's no singular answer here or a singular strategy that applies to all schools that have both majors. But I will give you some general advice. I will say in general for our MT interested folks, if there is that ultimate goal of what you really want being musical theater, I would encourage you to audition for musical theater at the schools where we have that opportunity and trust that if they like you as an actor, they will see you as an actor and that you could potentially still get in as an actor, right? I know some people are strategists out there, especially if you listen to this pod, you're probably a strategist of this process.

And you might say, well, I've noticed the acting program. I might have a better chance statistically. And if I say I'm only interested in acting and I really like acting, does that maybe increase my chance a bit in if I really want to go to a school like Carnegie Mellon and I care more about the Carnegie Mellon of it all than I do about the difference between the acting and the MT major. Should I like trick my way in by looking at BFA acting? And I do understand that logic and I'm all for the strategy. And I think I wouldn't say there's nothing to that. You'll hear some of that in a second here, but I will say if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know that I think it is really about going for what you want with integrity.

And if your truest version of your dream at this moment is to study musical theater, you should audition for that major and let the chips fall where they may. That said, on the flip side, I wouldn't think of like auditioning for MT doubles my chances. So if you're the kind of student ultimately really likes acting the best, if you feel like your number one choice in life would be to study BFA acting, you should audition for BFA acting, right? And I think my biggest takeaway or my biggest advice, which you may be kind of hearing in my voice here for those straddlers is that with as much integrity as you possibly can, you want to be in the room you're in, right? Because I do think there is something to some of these acting schools, especially these acting schools that have well-known MT departments like Elon, where they could be sensitive to that question of, do you really want to be an actor?

Or is this a second choice for you? Right? Again, I think you can be honest about auditioning for MT programs if that's something you're doing as well. But if you can speak toward really being interested in acting and wanting acting, even if you're doing MT as well, that certainly is going to be a boost for you in your acting auditions, right? I mean, it is definitely possible to be written off by some of these acting programs who think, I'm never getting this kid. They're ultimately an MT. Now, do I think that's fair of them to do? I don't. I don't always think it's fair to them to do that. You're 17 years old. You're discovering yourself. Maybe you just haven't realized that you're really a non-MT actor at heart, right?

And plenty of acting schools will recognize that. They'll recognize you're 17 years old and they'll take a chance on you, right? Even if they see you in your interview and all the ways you conduct yourself, primarily as an MT-focused student, they may still take a jump on you, right? But at a competitive landscape, that kind of writing off can sometimes happen, unfortunately. I certainly have heard that happen with friends of mine who run acting programs where they go, if I really think the kid is MT or bust, I'm not as interested as if I know this person is interested in acting. They like acting, right? And that's not just about the interview, when you're talking about school interests, where that's a place you obviously can control it, right?

It also shows up in the way that you engage in your monologues and in the acting portion of your audition, right? Do you only have the minimum two monologues in your book, but you have eight songs? Well, that might be telling a professor that you're not quite as interested in an acting program, right? It's great when you have that classical piece, even if a school doesn't require it, right? That if they ask about additional material and you can say, yeah, I've got this other classical piece or this other piece of any style that's not a contemporary style. In Kim's case, it sounds like she's not going to want to see a Shakespeare on a 17-year-old, but that is not true across the board. A lot of schools love to see it.

And they at least love to see that there's interest and passion and curiosity and potential, even if that Shakespeare piece isn't ready for the Globe stage. And I'm not just talking about Shakespeare. Of course, I love Shakespeare, so I'll talk about it a lot, right? But it's that question of like, have you read a lot of plays that you can talk about? Are you interested in plays? And that also includes, are you interested in TV and film and other art, right? Do you have things that you're interested in the acting world that you can talk about, right? All that stuff that you can do to show interest and curiosity, that can be as important as the material you actually show off, right? And some of that parlays into that question that we talked about in the interview of like, are you throwing spaghetti on the wall and kind of using this acting audition as a warmup?

Maybe it's a warmup walk in at Unified, right? Not that we would never say it's okay to walk into an audition and use them as a warmup and a loose investigation at least. If you go, I don't, it's not a school that holds a ton of interest, but I'm doing it as a walk-in, right? But if it feels that way from a faculty perspective, they're going to smell that on you and they're going to not want to accept you into their school, right? Especially if they're a more competitive school. So you do have to approach each audition with that curiosity and with that genuine interest, right? Nobody wants to feel like the spaghetti is being thrown against their wall. They don't want to feel like the wall that you're like, I don't know, let's see what happens, right?

So just be careful with how you toss it. Even if strategically, there's nothing wrong with that idea of going cast a wide net. We like that idea, right? But how do you do it? I think is the more important question. Okay. And then I'm just going to do some quick highlights on some of the other ideas I really loved, which was, I really love that idea of like Meisner is the only person who taught Meisner and everyone else is just doing some, somebody else's interpretation of that technique, right? I deeply believe that's true when you talk about acting stuff, right? I don't think there's one way to teach acting, but I certainly am a fan of what I learned in my experience, which was a bunch of different techniques.

We learned eight or nine different acting techniques in different ways, right? And then I combined them together into the Charlie Murphy method and so did all my classmates, right? And I really liked, that's how Kim talked about them doing it and all of their students are going to have their own method. And I think that's relatively common in a BFA acting program today, that you're not going to get a singular method, but that you might get exposure to, it sounds like a lot of Meisner here, but still the idea of going, how do you put it together in terms of your own technique from a certain foundation that they might give and not every foundation will be the same, but they may give you a foundation, but then let you create what you can use from that, right?

And certainly I know when I teach today, I mean, I feel a lot of the things that I teach centered around what my professors actively taught me. So there's some exercises you could draw back to the professor that taught them, right? And some of those exercises I know because they've given credit, those are Michael Chekhov exercises or their viewpoints exercises or whatever it is, right? But already you can see, it's a Michael Chekhov exercise taught by Barbara McKenzie Wood, right? You can already see them having added their spin to it. And I'll certainly hear that when I teach it, right? That it's going to feel pretty different me teaching. I'm not going to teach it exactly the way they taught it, right?

I know maybe I'm a little bit more aggressive because I really enjoy the combining and remixing of things. So often I won't even try to like just do the Michael Chekhov exercise. I'll just add a little flavor of that into an exercise that I already like, right? I often will joke when I'm putting together curriculum, I'll be like, I'll toss a little viewpoints in there, right? It'll be a bit viewpointy, right? And I'll be teaching something that has nothing particularly to do with viewpoints. It'll be a, maybe it's a warmup game or it's some kind of acting technique or, but it'll kind of end up being a mix of that and there's a guided meditation in there and there's some life philosophy that's in there and it just gets a little blurry, right?

But I'll just be like, eh, there's some viewpoints in there, which really what I mean is like, I had kids walk around the room, there was a bit of structure to something that exists in viewpoints and then I tried to teach them some acting and some other things came up and came through that, right? And certainly you wouldn't recognize that as like, oh, that was viewpoints taught as viewpoints, right? Which maybe leads me really well into that idea of point of view, this is a different meaning of the word viewpoints, but point of view as an audition technique. You know, Kim was talking about point of view specifically as a Meisner technique, but I'll just say from my perspective, the broader concept of point of view is one of the most helpful ways you can approach this particular audition process because you're not auditioning for these plays that your monologues are from, right?

And these colleges are not accepting the best 20 monologues they see like on a statistical basis, right? They're accepting human beings and they want to see your artistic perspective and your point of view and they want to see your ability to add point of view to a piece, right? I often call that like leaving the room smelling like you, you want to leave the room smelling like Charlie or I want to leave it smelling like Charlie, you want to leave it smelling like you, right? But that means not just doing contrasting monologues that are contrasting on the page, but adding in your unique flavor and your idiosyncrasies and your point of view to the characters so that we really get a sense of who you are through the work, right?

And that who you are gets to be as distinct a human being as you want that person to be. You are not a chameleon, you do not have to be a blank page and in fact we don't want you to be a blank page, right? It's great if you're flexible, right? We love flexibility, we love versatility, but you get to be an artist with distinct opinions and a point of view in the world absent your ability to just play any character, right? And colleges will respond to that, right? They might not like your specific opinions, they might not vibe with your specific artistry, but that means you're doing your job, you're doing the process right if you give them something to like or not like. If you're trying as hard as you can to be inoffensive and to be nothing and not do anything that could get you into trouble, then you're not giving school something to respond positively to either. So don't be afraid to have a point of view.

[1:22:04] Charlie Murphy: Okay, let's wrap there on another episode of Mapping the College Edition produced by Kelly Prendergast with social media work by Jordan Rice. Please like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, write us a rating and review with your unique point of view on this very podcast and you know you can check us out at mtca.com for help with your individual college process and so many other things. 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.