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[0:10] Charlie Murphy: Hello and welcome to Mapping the College Audition, a podcast where we explore the landscape of the college theater world and try to demystify this daunting audition process.

[0:19] Charlie Murphy: I'm your host, Charlie Murphy, Director of MTCA. That's Musical Theater College Auditions. Check us out at MTCA.com.

[0:26] Charlie Murphy: And today we have got Michael Minarik from the Institute for American Musical Theater, IAMT on the pod. Uh Michael was introduced to me through our mutual close friend and podcast guest, Sarah Salzberg, and he is a delightful and unique energy.

[0:42] Charlie Murphy: If you guys think I talk fast, just get ready for this one. This might be an episode to turn off the 1.5 times speed you've been listening to this podcast on all your weeks here. But I do really appreciate the passion he brought to this interview, and he clearly brings to that program a real authenticity in what he believes in and what he's trying to build with IAMT.

[1:00] Charlie Murphy: And I will, of course, give the caveat again for those who haven't heard all of our other non-BFA episodes, that this episode might not be for some of you. Uh if you think you're curious, you might find it an interesting and I think enlightening conversation and some fun banter. Uh, but if you know for sure that you're a BFA or bus person, or even if you're looking more toward those BAs, then IAMT is likely not the school for you.

[1:21] Charlie Murphy: Um, even some of our less academic students do have a hard line at not wanting a non-degree granting school. That was too many negatives that they want a degree granting school, is what I mean. In which case, you know the drill, you can shut off this episode, just leave us a quick review on your podcast platform of choice with an extra hour that you've just gained thanking us.

[1:40] Charlie Murphy: Um, for our class of 2025 and younger listeners, if you haven't yet met MTCA, we are doing another round of our free MTCA workshops on next Wednesday, June 5th at 8 p.m. If you're listening on Episode Drop Day at 8 p.m., that's exactly a week from today. If you like to wait a week before you listen to episodes, then it is occurring right now as we speak.

[2:01] Charlie Murphy: And you have a unique opportunity. You can be listening to this interview while you watch me talk in real time. I think it's a great chance for many of you to put a face to your favorite podcast host's voice and to learn about the process. See some of our great MTCA artistic coaches. Do they work with our students? You can come with your questions, come with your curiosity. It even includes a discounted rate on an initial consultation if you choose to move forward with us.

[2:22] Charlie Murphy: Though of course you have no obligation beyond this free online hour. All right, pitch made. I hope you feel pitched. I hope you feel sold. Go sign up at MTCA.com. And let's get into it. Here's Michael Minarik from IAMT.

[2:41] Charlie Murphy: Well, we are so excited to have on the show Michael Minarik from the Institute for American Musical Theater. He's whooping. That's so exciting. Even as we do the bio. Michael went to James Madison University, did not finish school. We'll talk about that a little bit in the show. He's been on Broadway in Matilda, Rock of Ages, Le Miz, Tours of Little Women, Urinetown, many other exciting things in the regional world.

[3:03] Charlie Murphy: He's produced musicals on and off Broadway. He has a Tony nomination as an associate producer of Rock of Ages. And he is the sole owner and director of the Institute for American Musical Theater, IAMT, which is located in New York City. They take classes of about 50 students and they offer a certificate granted at the end of the second year. Michael, welcome on the show. You've already, we've heard your whoop on the show, but welcome officially. How are you?

[3:27] Michael Minarik: Thanks. I'm so excited to be here. Let's do this.

[3:29] Charlie Murphy: Excited to have you. Um so I gave a little bit of a bio there, but just talk to me a little bit about your journey to IAMT and what people should know about you personally before we kind of get into the school itself.

[3:39] Michael Minarik: Oh gosh. Well, I'm a Scorpio. Um I uh That's number one. Scorpio. Number one is Scorpio. I love hamburgers. Uh no, I went to college for business and public relations and finance. And then in my senior year, I luckily booked a national tour. And so my parents were like, you have one life, go live it. And so I left and I went on a national tour.

[3:55] Michael Minarik: On that national tour, I got another one, and then I went to this uh the city. I was studying my microeconomics and macroeconomics on my bus while I was there and on tours, but I never really finished my degree. I got to the city and my friend was like getting me a survival job. So I looked in the village voice and said, Do you want to make some money? I was like, Great. So I went down and got my real estate license. So I sold and rented apartments for 20 years in New York City while I was on Broadway.

[4:13] Michael Minarik: Then I got uh Urinetown National Tour, Little Women National Tour. I was about to go on another national tour. My other was like, Why don't you save some money on all those tours you did and try to get on Broadway? I was like, great. So I did that and I was lucky enough to get on Les Mis. And then from that, I was in the workshops of Rock of Ages, and I was like, this is gonna make a billion dollars. And the lead producer was like, why? I was like, because all the guys I played rugby with in college who I'm forcing to come see me in Les Mis and Little Women, um, now are gonna come see me in Rock of Ages because there's you know, apparently some people in this country like alcohol and 80s music and dancing.

[4:41] Michael Minarik: And so he was like, Do you want to produce it with me? And I already had the job. And I was like, Yeah, but I don't want him, I don't want people to think or whatever about like how I got the job. He's like, well, I'll just give you a pseudonym on the poster. I'm like, sounds good. So while I was in rehearsals with Jeremy Jordan, who is I think his first Broadway show and a bunch of other people, um, I had a pseudonym of John Butler. My father and my grandfather passed away right before the show opened. So I used my dad's name as John and my grandfather's name is Butler. So if you ever look at the original poster, I'll say John Butler on his producer.

[5:06] Michael Minarik: But yeah, I think I was I don't want to say, I think I might have been one of the first people to produce and perform in a Broadway show, and then I got a Tony nomination. And then from that I was producing Fat Camp on Broadway, and then uh after Rock of Ages was over, I was like, I think I'm uh gonna be done with this, but I think I just wanna produce. And then Matilda came around and I got a final callback, and my wife said, if you don't do this job, we're moving to Hawaii. And I was like, Well, I want to stay in the city. And I'm being dead serious. She's like, I was like, I think I just want to do real estate and produce shows. She goes, Well, if you do that, we don't need to be in New York. So I was like, All right. So I got the job and I took it and I understood the trunchbull, which is amazing.

[5:35] Michael Minarik: And then in that, um, helped build a musical theater program. And when I was in Matilda backstage with Matilda, I was just all these guys are talking to me about their conservatory and how much money they spent. I was like, and I I don't ever mean to be pejorative, but I just didn't understand. I actually said I was like, Why'd you spend so much money on a degree in jazz hands? And they're like, Well, you know, it costs a lot of money to go to these schools. I was like, Yeah, but they're teaching the same things they've been teaching for the past 60 years. Why is it 10x more intuition than it was 50 years? They haven't built a new 3D printing system to teach you how to act. And they're like, Minarik, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. I was like, and that's when I said, I'm in the same dressing room you are. And they're like, that's a solid point.

[6:07] Michael Minarik: And so I was like, you know what? Let's build a school taught by us. So over the next few years, we built the Institute for American Musical Theater, which I thought, you know, in capitalistic economic economy, like networking and access are one of the most important things. One of my parents who just uh accepted to come to the school said, Your network is your net worth. And I love that phrase now. Your network is your net worth. And, you know, my and that's kind of how we came to build it. And so now, you know, I own it. We have over uh we're about to expand again. So we have over 15,000 square feet of space in Washington Heights. We have three massive dance studios with no poles, which is a very big deal in New York City. A lot of studios will have poles to hold up all their buildings. We don't have any poles.

[6:44] Michael Minarik: Um You're talking about big square poles, not like this poles for people to dance on in New York City. Right, that's not Rock of Ages poles. Yeah, that's Rock of Ages, right? So, like we've had you know, three kids on Broadway already, national tours, some girls on the Lizzo tour. We have a girl who just did a movie with Timothy Chalamet, TV film, everything that every all the other schools have had, and we're incredibly a lot cheaper. And what I've also found out is that most BFA programs will teach you about five to six hundred hours of training in four years because of the gen eds. We do about 1,200 hours of training in two years.

[7:12] Michael Minarik: So you get more training for less money and less time, and then at the end of our two years, we do something called Agent April instead of an agent showcase. I feel like an agent showcase is a bit archaic, in the sense where, like, you know, you spend four years, you have all your friends, you're getting ready to do it, and then that morning you have IBS, your boyfriend breaks up with you, your dog dies, and then you have to do one shot in your 15-second medley of songs for New World to try to get your agent. I was like, Well, I think there's a better way to do it.

[7:33] Michael Minarik: So in the month of April, which is happening right now, we do an agent basically every single day. So I have 21 talent agents that come into this school. And every day these kids audition for a different talent. We actually have three in one day today. So because I want them a two things. One, I want them to learn how to audition. When you audition, it's not just once and then you're done. You do one almost every other day. What is it like to sit next to somebody who's doing lip drills or drinking honey or listening to MM or tell them, like, oh my god, Judy, you're here. Hi, while they're screaming at you, or trying to focus. Like, how do you do that? And then when you're done, too, like, what are you feeling when you're done?

Do you overanalyze? What are you thinking? So we teach the kids to go in there, share your art, seek your joy, and then go get a snack because that's all you can really, you know, control how to do. And even on the steps of our school, it says get a snack. It says choose love, it says seek your joy and breathe.

[8:14] Michael Minarik: And so then the second fold is they get to figure out how to audition too. So we have one girl in here who, after her fifth agent, she's like, I'm just not getting the response from these agents. I was like, switch up the songs. You have 14 more agents, 16 more agents to go through. She goes, That's a great idea. So she tried something the next day, call back the next day, call back. She goes, Oh my gosh. Another kid was like, I'm not really enjoying this outfit. I'm like, Great, you have 17 more agents. It's not a one-shot thing. And so, and the agents love it because they're also not competing with each other at that showcase, trying to get those like how many kids they want. So it's proved really, really beneficial, and the agents just love it.

They're like, We don't need to give feedback. I'm like, no, because I don't really care if they get signed or not, because they have no control over that. I want them to learn how to audition and have fun. And so the kids have the best dang time. They're like, Mr. Minarik, I love every second of this. This is so much fun.

[9:00] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, that's a, I mean, that was definitely my showcase experience. We did two. We did one in New York and one in LA. And I've learned so much between the showcase. It's such a better showcase in LA just from the experience and the break and realizing what I learned through going to the process.

[9:12] Michael Minarik: Right. But I was also like, I didn't want to go to LA. So I'm not had this amazing response in LA. I was like, can I get that response in New York? Because that's where I want to end up. It's really tricky. And that's I don't understand. And also, what I've also heard from these kids, some kids transferred from other schools, so it's they're like, you know, it's funny, Mr. Minarik, like after three and a half years, you build all your friendships, but then that last semester, you're all fighting for that 30-second spot with your friends, and all those friendships have kind of died because the competition starts. All our kids are helping each other for their dance warm-ups for the because we have five massive dance agencies coming in.

They're helping each other with their song choices because they're like, we're not competing, we're doing it together. And that's what I really, you know, this business is so darn hard anyway. Like, I did the math. I'm sure you're a big math person, but like if you really think about it, like there's only about 31 Broadway theaters. Broadway's been around since 1930 or so. I really start with Oklahoma, and there's about 20 people for Broadway show. So if you do the math, only about a hundred thousand people in the history of the world have ever actually performed on a Broadway stage. That's it. It's less than the NFL, Major League Baseball, hockey. And so if you don't have a community of people to help you do this industry and be kind, you're screwed.

So the main thing at our school is let's build a community of kind, respectful, hardworking, nice, loving human beings, and that will help you guide you through the existence that you have in this art.

[10:21] Charlie Murphy: I love it. What about me makes you think I'm sure I'm a big math person? Is it the way I look? Is it something about the way my hair is styled?

[10:27] Michael Minarik: I feel you're really smart, and I I feel like you live with numbers. I don't know nor why. Actually, true, but I'm like, I don't want to look at that.

[10:31] Charlie Murphy: Like, I don't want that to be.

[10:35] Michael Minarik: I don't want so you never want to be told you look like a math person.

[10:39] Charlie Murphy: No, I think you're smart. And also, by the way, I'm an acting teacher. My entire day is looking for truth in human beings. So I'm like, I got it. He's objective. He's about qualitative. You look like you play Magic the Gathering. That's what you look like.

[10:48] Charlie Murphy: Okay, well, thank you. I don't want to look like that. Um, anyway, let's get it. So we're getting some really granular stuff, which is great. Just from a large scale perspective, you know, a lot of our listeners are gonna listen to a bunch of different episodes about a hundred bunch of different schools. You're talking about some of the ways in which your school is different than some of the big BFA liberal art programs out there. Can we just like talk about what that like literally means? We said obviously it's being two years. Um I'd love to talk about like kind of cost, and then you've talked a little bit also in terms of curriculum of how it could be different. Basically, so let's talk about like what do they get in terms of are there any academics? Are there is there anything other than the training that's happening? Well, what does that mean just from the hours of the day that great call, right?

[11:25] Michael Minarik: So, like the one academic class that I do is a finance class because I was a finance major. So, you know, when I was on all of my tours, it was really funny. I was talking about 401ks and Roth IRAs and pensions and annuities and stuff, and they're like, we don't know what you're talking about. I said, You're on a production contract Broadway tour, saving about 50K a year, and you have no idea what you're doing with your money. They're like, we weren't taught that. I'm like, I'm gonna shoot my are you kidding me? Like, I had a friend who was on Hamilton for five years, and I was like, How is your 401k doing? And he's like, What's a 401k? And I looked at his 401k at 125,000 in there without him ever putting any money in. That was just the company putting it in. So you could have had seven, eight hundred thousand dollars in his compound interest 401k, but nobody taught him.

[12:03] Michael Minarik: So I take four weeks in the last semester for the second years, and I teach them all about retirement and also corporations, LLCs, S-corps, um, C corps, because I think most actors today should become corporations because the America is built towards small business economics and small business taxation systems. So it was funny. Like, I've been in a corporation for a long, long time, and my taxes have been drastically different. I found out that a few friends of mine in Hair, I told him about it, and then all of Hair, not because of me, just whatever. They all all these actors started becoming corporations. I was like, why don't these schools teach you about becoming C corps or S-corps or LS or sole proprietorships?

Because you being an employee is bad news bears for taxes, but you all are basically sole proprietorships. So I teach that. We don't do any gen eds. If you want to learn about a mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell, you can go to mit.edu.com for free. You know, if you want to learn about art history, you can do the same thing. All those classes are online for free. We give a certificate program, which is to be honest, the same as a BFA. They all go to the same graduation people and print out the same thing and we give it to you. One just says we're accredited, and the government tells them that what they're doing is what the government approves for them to get their FAFSA. I don't do that.

I'm basically a really nice autocrat. So I'm like, we're gonna make up a curriculum that I think the current musical theater, film and TV plays and stuff, will behoove you to succeed in this industry. So, like one of the kids like, Mr. Minarik, I need an acro class.

[13:14] Michael Minarik: So we're gonna build an elective acro class. There's no board of directors or arts and sciences or a budget. I mean, I have a budget, of course, but if you want to do a new class, let's just make a new class. Let's just figure it out. So our curriculum is nine to 4:30 every single day. We have, I think, six types of dance: commercial, ballet, tap, hip-hop, jazz. Oh gosh, I'm not the greatest dancer, so I forgot the other two. But I mean, we do the most dance of any school in the country. We have kids dropping out of some of the top dance programs because we dance more than they do. We dance about 10 hours a week. And they're not dance majors. They also have five hours of voice and then also five hours of acting and song interpretation, audition tech classes, some scene study classes, dialect classes.

In their third year, which is an optional third year, if you want to do just one more for us more emotional maturation, we have a directing class. Our directing head is Ryan Emmons, who's the associate director of Water for Elephants and Kimberly Kimber on Broadway, who is my associate director on Matilda. So we also have a meditation room that I'm sitting next to right now, too. Like we build whatever the kids think that they need to do. Our shows, performance-wise, we do new works because I was a producer for a long time. I know how hard and expensive it is to get up new works. So what we do is every semester we have two or three new works. The kids put up with like Tony Award-winning directors or amateur directors.

John Carafa just came in who choreographs for the Gilded Age and Westworld and only merged in the building to a whole acting piece in our kids, and he asked one of them to be his new assistant. But now they make those connections, right? I was on your in town, the Broadway tours, so Greg Codis and Mark Holman come in and do their new works at a school. And then just people like Doug Cohen, who does off-Broadway shows come in, or Kenneth Farone, who directed Annie Live, came in and do one of his shows. So the kids are making these connections with these new works. And then lastly, I give kids money to put up their own shows. If they like one of the kids today wants to, they want to do Into the Woods.

I'm like, okay, do it into the woods. Like Mr. Mirex is gonna cost us $3,000. Like, great, here's a check, go do it. They cast it, they direct it, they put it up. There's no, again, you can have a faculty assistant take a look at it, but I want the kids to learn how to build these shows themselves without any sort of financial impediment.

[15:12] Michael Minarik: Cost of the school right now, full price is 60 grand for two years, all in. They do find their own housing, but we help with that, maybe a real estate agent. We have about three or four brokers around the city that will help you. Almost all of our kids find apartments in Washington Heights. The great thing about that is you're not stuck to a room and board. If you go to a school and say it's $8,000 a semester from board, you can choose. If you want to have two single beds in a room in a one bedroom, you're paying $450 a month for rent, have at it. But they also figure out how to make their community, where they're living, their survival jobs. We also give scholarships, merit scholarships as well, so that costs can come down.

We don't have FAFSA. We don't do any loans if you want to do that. I actually one parent was like, I just took out three no interest credit cards. I'm like, done. There's your loans, it's the same thing. And you're gonna get free Delta Miles, go on some flights to Venice. So parents have found different ways to making it work if they can't afford. But if you look in the long run, some parents are like, well, you know, I'm paying, let's say 30 grand a year, that's the same as this school. I was like, no, no, no, you're going to that school for four years. That's 120,000. Come to my school for two, it's 60. Right. It's a lot less. And 98, 97% of our kids leave with zero debts. And I want to say that one more time.

There's almost we try to make it possible any way we can through payment plans or whatever, to leave here with debt. And then after you're done, all of our spaces are complimentary for the rest of your life. So if you want to come in and self-tape dance class, self-tape class, whatever the heck it is, you come and use any one of our dance studios and self-tape studios for free. You never pay for a thing again. We also have discounted voice lesson classes. We have free headshots, we have free dance reels, all that stuff.

[16:35] Charlie Murphy: That's so cool. I definitely want to talk about that more. But so talk to me a little bit about the payment plan. So basically loans from the federal loans was something that's not going to be possible.

[16:43] Michael Minarik: No, because we're not, we're not accredited, right? So we can't do that. But so what they do is some parents truly goes, all right, I'll just get a personal loan. I'm like, great, go ahead. And then, but truly, we've had many parents just say, So I'll if I just get like a Delta Amex with no interest for 18 months. I'm like, yeah, go ahead. It's the same thing. It's just not more in the student, and it's not something where you guys are providing. You can do this over five years or 10 years or something like that. You're something that's a good idea. We have talked to some different loan companies, and so we're actually have one that we might be talking to to have a relationship with. But we figured out over the past seven years, parents and kids, they find a way. I mean it and because it's not as expensive, a lot of loan companies are like, yeah, here you go, that's fine. But that that's just the way it is.

[17:23] Michael Minarik: Well, and you're speaking toward, I guess, some of the positives also of like, you know, a lot of faculty have talked about the difficulty of the bureaucracy that you know often their schools are, and you're saying, well, we don't have that, right? You don't have any bureaucracy. You have you don't have red tape to cut through.

[17:35] Charlie Murphy: Zero. Let's talk a little bit about the flip side of so you know, these degrees now, or the classes they take now, if I understand correctly, would not transmit to an associate's degree or a bachelor's if they were to say they wanted to go somewhere else. This is not counting toward that.

[17:46] Michael Minarik: Not at all. I basically look at the school's a litmus test because I had some finance friends of mine who own hedge funds, they have a lot of houses but no souls, right? So, like they so they they are like, I was like, you know, do you guys went to UVA? And they're like, Yeah, I was like, Did you learn more in six months at Goldman Sachs or four years of UVA? They're like six months at Goldman. I was like, would you have gone to a two-year intensive for Goldman Sachs and four years of UVA? They're like, in two seconds. I was like, Great. So what I think is this we're more like a beta test or a litmus test. If this is what you really, really want to do, then you come to my school, and after two years, you're like, you know what?

This is too hard. I don't like it. Good. This business is really hard. You're 20 years old, you spent X, go back to school and get your chemical engineering degree, you'll be done in two and a half years, and there's your freaking FAFSA and go off me a chemical engineer. And my finance friends are like, actually, that makes a ton of sense. I was like, right, so now you know now, and again, you know what you don't want, but at least you went for it for two years. You went, you know, I take kids to Broadway shows, we're taking them to see outsiders and Tommy because my friends are the producers of those shows. We do talkbacks of the shows that people come in and they do all their, you know, my friends produce Wicked, they produce Moulin Rouge, right?

So we go and meet all the producers, and I want them to have every single experience possible. We do pre-pro at our schools that a lot of schools don't do, because you know, my friends just did the Mean Girls tour that Broadway on company on Broadway. They did pre-pro at our school with our kids. Like, I give you access to as much as many people as I know, and I'm loud and obnoxious, hopefully in a kind way. So I've met a lot of people, and in that sense, like we just did a pre-pro for beautiful at Papermill Playhouse with the director Casey Hushin, because Casey and I worked at Phantom together, and the choreographer Jen Bender was there. So now she met 18 of our kids. That was basically a private audition.

We're doing four pre-pros for three national tours in the fall. All these kids get to meet all of them. Like, I think that's worth more personally, and this is my own personal opinion, than a degree that says, I know how to sing. Right. But who did you meet? We had a teacher here that said, you know, I went to a certain school and none of my teachers had their equity cards. And I was like, well, then what are we? Well, I don't understand what we're doing. And I said this to you before. You don't need a degree to play football in the NFL. Why do you need it? You don't need a degree to do this. So if you don't need a degree to do this, why are you getting one? But that's just my personal opinion.

But and I doubt it's true. We talk about it on the podcast a lot. That there's certainly when you say I'm in the same dressing room as our friend Gabe Biebert, who and who was a podcast guest in Matilda or any of these musicals. I mean, you will see people from all the big schools with big degrees, and you'll see people who don't have a degree at all for sure. That there's definitely is not in the professional world a litmus test where they go, I'd love to cast you, but you don't have a degree. No one's ever said that. For sure. Save for maybe a straight play where it's they're like, listen, we need you to have a little bit of training here. Like I and I I get that a little bit, but man, I've been on what probably a thousand auditions, and no one's like you just said, no one said, Oh my erica, I want to put you in Matilda.

But you got to be in dance. Maybe could be the reason right the being dance, maybe it could be the reason that it's harder to get into a room. You know, if you're trying to audition for Shakespeare, could it be harder to get in the room if you don't have an MFA or what? But once you're in the room, no one's going, but what about the degree? Once they see you, no.

[20:35] Michael Minarik: And if I can, and if I'm bringing all the casting directors here already, and I'm bringing all the talent agents here already, they've already met you. I just had an agent, she woke just by from the price group, and I was like, just let you know, I've done a lot of work for you. She says what you mean. I was like, well, they already know Mary Sugarman and Rachel Hoffman and Scott Woodrick and Alison Frank and the Carnahan group. So I've already all those doors you don't have to break down anymore. And she's like, I'm sorry, what did you just say? I said, I've already broken down all the doors for you as a talent agent. You don't have to break those doors down. Because when I first started, my agent was like, nobody knows who you are.

Like, I got them after my second national tour. It took me years to meet, you know, Craig Burns and Bernie and all these people. We're bringing that if we're bringing them in, those doors are broken. So these agents are like, You've already done half my work for me. I was like, Yeah, I know.

[21:14] Charlie Murphy: There is something also so cool about meeting agents in a classroom kind of environment. Because I remember feeling the kind of weird strain and pressure of like the first time. I'm sorry, I don't mean agents, I mean casting directors. The first time auditioning for a casting director, especially if the role isn't one you're amazing for that you're being sent out for, you're going, I'm really doing a go see for you. I want to meet you. I don't care. I'm not really gonna get cast. I'm 15 years too young for this role. But I'm trying to like show off for you, but I also don't want to not get cast. Like that's a weird experience when it's and and also what they do, you know. Rachel is so great, she brings, she does mock auditions, so she'll bring in signs from a season she's doing at the St. Louis Muni, and then she'll, you know, and she'll be great.

Well, you're gonna do some callbacks, and then the kids don't get called back, they sit in and watch the thing happen so they can watch how an audition works. One of the kids will be a reader, like this also, you know, our choreographer just booked the she's now gonna be the choreographer, or the dance has gonna be the choreographer for the St. Lou Sages of St. Louis newsies because I bring in regional theaters to my school, like Gail C. You know, we actually chartered a bus up to the rev because Brett Smok's a badass. I don't know if you have to, you know, censor that. He's the shit. And so we also had you know, um, gateway players. The first one we would, now we do. Come on, now we do. Okay, sorry.

[22:19] Michael Minarik: In a gateway playhouse came in. We had four different regional theaters come in, our kids booked the job, and every one other is your Forrestburg Playhouse came in. And so, because of what happened though, was our dance head did her combo, they're like, That's really good. I think we want this for newsy. So now our dance had just got hired. So now our the heads of our programs now working, like MJ Slinger's teaching over there. He's the associate choreographer of Heart of Rock and Roll on Broadway. He's teaching our kids every week. This isn't a one-semester thing. D. Thomasetta, the dance captain for Tommy teaches our kids every week when she's not in our shows. It's it one of some of the people on my staff are like, I went to X school, I saw a casting director once in four years. I'm like, they see them every two or three weeks.

[22:58] Charlie Murphy: Yep. You talked a little bit about the order of operations. It totally makes sense in terms of going, hey, I'm 17, 18. I want to see if this feels right for me, and then maybe potentially I would go to college. What are the different ages? Are most of your students 18, 19, 20? Are some of them out of BFAs and then they come to you? Are some of them younger? How does it work in terms of obviously they don't have to be a certain age to go to your school necessarily?

[23:18] Michael Minarik: But you're asking brilliant questions. I gotta point that out, math guy. So we have three kids, four kids under 18 right now, because their parents, they were like, they went to this wonderful dance studio, but they were the best their dance studio, and they're like, what do we do with them now? And I was like, well, because of COVID, now the kids can graduate from high school online. So they come here at 17 or 16, they finish graduate, they finish their high school online, they finish here at 18, they get an agent, they go out and start working. Two of our kids were in Music Man at 17 years old. One of our kids is 18 years old and funny girl on Broadway. We also have kids that do do their BFAs and they feel like they haven't gotten enough training.

So we've had kids that come out and do more. They're like, is this like a master's? It's like you can categorize it whatever way you want that makes you feel happy. It's just two years of training and it's in intense training. So you're a great question, but it's the majority are kids right out of high school, but like I think in the upcoming semester, we have a girl that's finishing her senior year of high school. We also, by the way, have a kid who's going to Penn State for psychology while she's at our school. So she's getting her degree from Penn State while we're doing here. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, that's really smart too. So more and more kids are actually thinking about doing that. They're like, I'm gonna get my separate degree, but go here and train.

[24:26] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, well, I want I mean, it sort of occurs to me that you like we do often with non-musical actors, will sort of sometimes get a BA and then get an MFA if they're not sure. I kind of wonder are there like people who have a full BA who go, I didn't get as much intensive training and I want to show up in like two years of your school.

[24:41] Michael Minarik: You haven't a kid who is studying, like I forgot what it was called out in California, and she was 22 years old, and she's like, Can I come here for two years? Okay, now she's on the Book of Mormon tour. Like she's sort of the equivalent of an MFA, even though we don't really have a lot of MFAs in musical theater, but you're saying I'm taking a secondary degree or whatever.

[24:55] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, and a lot of kids are like, Yeah, and they're just like, I want to meet these people. How do I meet these people? And then I was like, now you're understanding how capitalism truly works. Like I was at a meeting in LA, and I sing for the Yankees a lot, I'm very lucky, they seem to like me. But also, if they lose and I sing, they don't ask me back. It's true. They're superstitious like that. So, like A-rod struck out, and I was like, Wait, I can't come back because he sucks. And they're like, Yeah, sorry, come back. So I was at a meeting, and this girl's dad was like, Yeah, she really wants to do some you know analytics for sports, and she wants to give them the marketing department. I was like, Oh, some of my friends are in marketing for Yankees, want me to give them a call?

She goes, Yeah, sure. That's worth more than four years at a school because, like, oh, Moneric, your friends, great, we'll bring her in for an internship meeting. That this is how this works, right? I mean, I get calls from casting directors all the time being like, Hey Moneric, do you have any kids for my shows? So we started also become a casting directorship too, because like honestly, a week ago, we'll a guy from Regional Theater, I need three, three people. Great, who else you got? I have Broadway casting directors calling me. What do you got for me? So I think again, and I want to say this before we said before. And also, all of you out there think what I'm saying is stupid. That's great.

That means you really, really, really want a BFA, and that makes me happy. What I wanted to give people was choice. And I think the most wonderful but also difficult thing in life is choice. So if you say that guy's an idiot, he smells, he's a Yankee fan, I hate him. That's great. Now you really want to go to Mars University. I will never put a specific college, and you really, really are excited about your choice. That's so wonderful. But now I'm giving you choice. Now there is, we were in New York City. Every all the people that I know come teach here. Do you want to learn from the people that are doing it? Also, our dance head is commercial dance-based and not ballet-based because Broadway's going commercial.

[26:29] Michael Minarik: Like all these new shows are hip hop. Of course, we do ballet. We have amazing ballet teachers. But look at Anne Juliet and Jagged Little Pill and Hamilton, all these shows are like, oh my God, everything's starting to hip hop commercial stuff. And I think a lot of these programs are being left behind. These kids come out who can't do commercial as well as ballet. And we do dance, we just had block agency yesterday at MSA, Clear Talent, and we do a jazz combo and then a commercial combo. And afterwards, one of the agents said to me, and I will, he's gonna give us a quote, and he said, No one's training like this in the entire country. He's like, I've never seen kids this versatile through all these different mediums that you're doing right now, Michael.

He's like, This is and we're gonna I we'll get a quote, I promise, like when we'll get it up on our Instagram. I was blown away. He's like, people are just kind of stuck in their little myopic majors as they go through, and they're not giving them the full compliment of what this business really is.

[27:13] Charlie Murphy: That's really interesting. It sounds not so dissimilar from I don't know, 10, 15 years ago when it feels like schools were very behind on the pop rock of it all singing-wise. There's definitely something like that with dance too, where you go, it's this kind of fusion of it's like modern, but there's still some older techniques in there. It's almost a new thing that seems like it's emerging in the...

[27:27] Michael Minarik: Charlie, you look at all the dance competition conventions. It's all hip-hop, like ballet is dying. And that's wonderful in Saturday. It's just like you don't see Oklahoma and you know, Carousel regional theaters anymore because people want to see other shows. It's the same thing with dance. And so we get these Trinas in here from like other ballet schools, and they're like, How do I move like this? And after two years, they're just like popping and locking with their glow sticks. I'm like, there we go. That's Broadway. Let's go.

[27:53] Michael Minarik: To talk to me a little bit, you mentioned you know, a lot of your faculty are working. How does that work in terms of like curriculum if a faculty member does book or something? Or I'm in tech for Waterfall Elephants or all the different things that are going on in New York. How does that work with sort of the students and maintaining some consistency in their training?

[28:08] Michael Minarik: Yeah, it's wonderful, and it's a wonderful problem to have. Like, I don't think I'm allowed to say it. Well, I can say Jackie Burns, who's amazing as a teacher at our school, and she was just in Titanic, and then she came and taught, and then she just something happened to her, so she had to leave immediately, which we're so happy about. And but yeah, then what but the great thing is Jackie Burns then just calls her friends. So then it's like Haley Pachoon comes in because Jenny Denoy is doing cruise ships, right? Or Anthony Murphy's in The Wiz. So he was like, I hear five people that are my friends. I think it's great. So we have consistency at the top. I'm the head of the acting department, Lindsay is head of dance, we have Tana Miller, head of voice.

Everybody underneath kind of moves around a little bit, but that's great. They have more and more and more chances for networking, right? Like instead of having the same teacher four years, now they know 17 different people in the industry.

[28:51] Michael Minarik: Yeah, I mean wait, we also, I mean, I actually had a girl go out and play softball. Like, I when I was on Broadway, I loved playing softball. Other than Broadway, softball is the best thing in the world, right? So Rock of Ages won a bunch of championships. We actually cast people based on their softball ability. I'm kind of not kidding because we wanted to win more championships. But I said, you know, it's a great place to network as well. So one of the girls, like Mr. Rek, I played softball for 10 years. I'm like, ooh. So I went out of the fields, I saw Clenna and Tave it and all the guys, and I was like, hey, can you this girl's really good? You want to put on our Moulin Rouge team? And they're like, yeah, let's see her play. And they played and she won the MVP and they won the championship. Now she knows all of those people. That to me is worth so much, right?

[29:25] Michael Minarik: So, and in your point, we have different teachers come in. That's great, right? Amanda LaMont's in here a lot, but then Christine Corner Smith was here, but then she got pregnant. Christine Cavilla was here, but then she got Chicago, but now all the kids know somebody in Chicago while they're going to school. So I think it's a blessing in that sense.

[29:42] Charlie Murphy: And now, Michael, I can't let you walk past the Broadway show like given you're talking to the reigning MVP of the championship team of the 130 division. I just wanted to be clear.

[29:50] Michael Minarik: Well, I didn't I knew I smelled something special about you, but I didn't realize wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, don't you want to do that? Don't have a trophy. It's in my closet. Elizabeth's trying to break it.

[30:00] Charlie Murphy: Why is it in your closet? Bring it out.

[30:01] Michael Minarik: No, that's well, you have to know my wife. That's not. It's not a good idea. I know your wife, and I'm just gonna go. She's broken my basketball trophies. I can't let her near my manager of the year trophy is next to my Tony nomination at my apartment. My wife's like, you've got to be kidding me. We tried hard to recruit Mr. Klenna, who's coming on the podcast in a couple weeks. We tried to recruit him, but he won't leave Moulin Rouge, which is understandable.

[30:21] Charlie Murphy: I understand. No, no, no. Well, you know, he's also, he's not made, it's not fair. God made him a minor league baseball player. That is it's just not fair. I'm I mean, it's ridiculous. But anyway, but well, dude, congratulations, you're a beast because 130 is tough. Where do you play short? Are you left? What are you?

[30:39] Michael Minarik: No, I play more first base than short stop, but a very good hitter. I'm very good. I play high school baseball too.

[30:45] Charlie Murphy: All right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Now we're getting distracted here. But I want to talk a little bit about you. You mentioned three different you know, heads in terms of you know, you're not an expert in dance, you're much more in acting, and sort of sort of the ways that it operates. Is there in terms of credit hours a focus of hey, we do more, spend more time dancing, more time singing, more time acting? How do you sort of look at the disciplines and how they interact?

[31:08] Michael Minarik: I would love to get it seven, seven, and seven. They do about 20 hours of training a week, which again I think is the most in the country. I don't know anybody else that does it. If they do, that's fine, but I haven't found it yet. Even other programs that are similar to ours still don't do it that much. So, what we like to do though is because dance is such a and also Broadway is an athletic thing. You know, Jeff Saturday, the Center for the Colts came and saw Rock of Ages once. He goes, You guys actually work harder than we do. He's like, we only play a game or you know a week, and what you guys, this is ridiculous. So we want to make sure these kids are athletically and physically competent to do these eight shows a week.

We also have my wife who does a thing called MELT training, which is stuff for myofascial release. So every Friday we kind of like help them with their tenon to get things to rehydrate so they don't have injuries. But we do a lot of dance, and also we do a lot of dance specifically because when you start out in your career, you're gonna be dancing. You're probably gonna be in the ensemble trying to get. I mean, Jeremy Jordan was in the ensemble of Rock of Ages as a swing, and they just made this something like the earthquake you heard was Jeremy Jordan actually dancing in a Broadway show. He danced in Rock of Ages because he had to understudy and be there. And if you don't know how to dance, if you're not competent, Broadway shows are getting more expensive and they're cutting down their ensemble.

So you better do all things, right? You can't just park and bark anymore in South Pacific. So we train you to do a ton of dance. So that's why there's 10 hours of dance, and the other 10 hours are broken up between acting and voice. We do mainly group voice lesson classes, but we also have opportunities for privates. But what I do with that is we do it very discounted rates. Private rates are 45 dollars for a half an hour, 75 for an hour. So if you think about it, if you took a private voice lesson in other school and you're dropping 100 grand for the year, if you just did one a week for an hour, you're dropping an extra 1500 bucks, that's it on top of your tuition. And you have those private voice lessons afforded to you the rest of your life at that same exact price.

So we do that. We also have private class afterwards for ballet, anything you want to do with the teachers. But we do a lot of dance, but again, we have kids in movies with Timothy Chalamet. But I just really want those kids to be very complimentarily excited about the all the talents that they currently have because my first call for Rock of Ages was a dance call. My first call from Matilda was a dance call, and I was the Trunchbull understudy. So if I couldn't get through that dance call, I wasn't gonna be the Trunchbull understudy. Right. Even though, of course, there's a lot more acting and comedy and different things that you need to actually book the job, you gotta get in the room. Right.

[33:15] Charlie Murphy: Yep. Well, talk to me about so obviously in the name, and we have it in our own name, musical theater college auditions, even though we, you know, do plenty of acting majors too. Do you think about like what the other paths for them, you know, in a two-year period, obviously to make some choices too. But in terms of like doing voiceovers, doing doing TV, doing like some of those things that aren't specifically musical theater, how do we start towards that?

[33:37] Michael Minarik: I actually actually wanted to change the name, and I won't say what it is yet because I think that's a more comprehensive. We have film and TV class for the kids twice a week or once a week, I forgot what it was. I think it's twice a week for the second year. So we teach them the acting first, the end of film and TV second. We also are gonna, we're building currently a new voiceover studio because one of the guys who's my assistant here was actually the voice of Boots in Dory the Explorer. He's done tons of voiceovers, so we're gonna add voiceover classes in next year. So we're doing the full comp on what those things are, but film and TV is especially important for these kids because again, you know, having multiple streams of income is incredibly important, right?

Like I did commercials and voiceovers, I'm sure you did as well, as well when I was on Broadway and did other things. So, yeah, but our film and TV department is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because we're gonna start having kids actually build their own TV shows while they're here as well. So that's that's yeah.

[34:21] Michael Minarik: So I wish the name would be different, but our brand is kind of exploding right now in a good way. And so I was like, okay, do I change it yet? But I just really wanted to change it to Charlie Murphy, and I thought that they would really just enjoy that.

[34:32] Charlie Murphy: Then they will all come if you make it.

[34:33] Michael Minarik: But they're all gonna come and say, How do we become the MVP photosophily? You can just call it MVP, Charlie Murphy MVP, MVP.

[34:39] Charlie Murphy: Yeah, for sure. Um, no, I uh you've already sort of spoke spoken to this a little bit in terms of the different conversations, and if people think you smell and they want to go somewhere else, but yeah, just love to hear, you know, as we're in April and you're looking at kind of next year's class, yeah, how are those conversations going in terms of students? I imagine there are students, I know some of our students who would audition for you, who are looking at maybe BFA, maybe you. And not everyone knows for sure. Hey, I'm definitely looking at a two-year program. There aren't that many also non-four-year programs. So, in terms of like, what are those conversations with parents? What are those conversations with students as they're deciding? Hey, I'm looking at cost, I'm looking at all this stuff.

[35:13] Michael Minarik: I love it. It's my favorite thing. Like, we just had a kid whose dad was like, you know what, Moneric, we're just gonna do the BFA route. I'm like, that's great. I'm so glad you made that decision. That makes me so happy. And he's like, Really? I was like, yes, like we're we're gonna our class is almost full, to be perfectly honest. Like, we're in April and we're booked. Like, we and we have more applications we've ever had before. We have more weightless kids, it's getting nuts. And most kids are still waiting on their FAFSA stuff. So that we're, I mean, my gosh, that we have kids just like it's getting crazy because when you sit down and actually talk about the return on your investment, when you actually look at the financial and qualitative understanding and proponents of what this is and what are you really buying?

And that's really important to me. When I say to you, who are your teachers? Who do they know? Who are they meeting? Who are you introduced? If you do mini fee at your school is Hello Dolly, that's great, directed by Bob Bobson, and that's freaking wonderful. But when you come to the city, nobody knows who Bob Bobson is, and everybody else has done mini fee too. So when I tell them, what do you really want to buy? You when you do these schools, what are you buying? Are you buying a name? Does that name help you get an agent? I'm giving you the same agents. What are you buying the training? I'm giving you the same, I think. Well, no, I'm giving you more training. Anybody can go into a library and buy an actor of preparers from Stanov Solovsky.

Why do you have to go to a school to learn that? I'm teaching you the business of what this is, right? Our teachers are, you're meeting these people. Like last year we had a bunch of kids at the Shenandoah Summer Conservatory because two of our teachers were teaching there. So they like hired our kids. That's just how we have a few kids in Rock of Ages because that's where I got my equity card, and I brought them in. Like, Moneric, we're gonna hire some of your kids. That's great. Like now our like what I want parents to always say, if you're gonna buy a car, they look over everything. What are you getting for the car? Your mileage, your rate.

[36:54] Michael Minarik: Yep. Think sadly. I believe so much in two um uh sayings. One is that every choice in life is based in love or fear. The friends you have, the food you have, the like you I wear these clothes because I like them, and I don't care if anybody makes fun of me for them. Other people wear clothes because they're scared of pure pressure, right? The other one is from Dostoevsky, my favorite author of all time. I'm a big freaking Russian literature nerd. But he said, Life is either cheap happiness or lofty suffering. And I think that most people go into deciding with this maybe for cheap happiness. I'm really scared. I'm gonna choose this out of fear. My kid needs a degree because if it doesn't work out, I was like, Yeah, but what does that degree get you?

I don't understand what the BFA in musical theater, and again, I want to have a philosophical conversation. What does that get you? Most of my friends that didn't do this or didn't quote unquote make it, they're not doing anything related to their BFA. And it didn't like one guy I know work when we go work for Tesla and was a sales associate, then he got deluged with stock, and he's a multimillionaire now. It has nothing to do with his BFA, right? Like most of my other kid now who's like um high up in this golf um thing. She was just started as a server, now she's like the regional manager for another girl I know is building um uh restaurants all over the country because she started as a server, they're competent human beings that were learning work ethic.

So I tell a lot of parents, like, why are you getting this BFA? And they're like, I don't know, I'm just told I'm supposed to get it. I'm like, yeah, but why? What are you buying? And they're like, well, I guess we're buying safety.

[38:10] Michael Minarik: It's I mean, especially in the world where you're talking about like you can go to MIT and get get a lot of specific education online. I mean, I think uh people however many years ago really thought, hey, in college, you pay for college for the education or maybe to learn how to think instead of the thing itself. But then I think increasingly, just in the world, people understand a college education to be about kind of the certification to be say, Hey, I have a degree from this school, and that lets me get X job. Because I think there are still plenty of put industries in the world where that is true.

[38:38] Charlie Murphy: Yes, and I think what you're speaking toward is you know, it's really true in this world that like certification absent the training, we're calling the training the education portion of it. The certification aspect of it is not as significant in this field as it is in other fields. It's not that there's zero element to it, but that it's just not the way where it's like, hey, we you know, my mom's a professor. It's like to get a uh professor and a law professor, you have to have gone to one of these schools to get in the interview or whatever. It's just like that's not quite true.

[39:05] Michael Minarik: Yes, I don't want my surgeon saying, I really feel like I can take your kidney out. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you need to go through medical school.

[39:12] Charlie Murphy: Medical school and it's gonna, yeah. But we are living in a subjective industry, so why do you need an objective thing to tell you that you are abil you're able to be successful in a subject? That's a paradox, it makes no sense to me. And how many kids have come out of like high school and just gone to Broadway? A bunch, right? How many kids come out of high school and play in the NBA? A bunch, they don't need a degree in dribbling. Like when you say it like that, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So, what are they really buying? I think that they're buying safety, yeah. But I don't think the safety is what it used to be. Yale is a hundred thousand dollars a year now.

[39:43] Michael Minarik: Like these colleges are and why? And that's another thing too. When do these colleges start? I mean, I talked to my father-in-law, and I was like, you know, how much did you pay for college? He's like, uh, I paid $750 a semester, but I got a thousand dollar subsidy from the state. I'm like, so you didn't pay anything for college. Like, that's right. And I was like, and they're teaching the same thing. He's like, that's right. I was like, so why is it 10x? I know why it's 10x because the government got involved in student loans, which means the colleges can jack up the prices, and so now they build more buildings to compete with the Joneses, so when you go tour, you want to see what you're paying for.

But I there are things also that make me angry. Like, I know I so badly want to say some stuff about I've heard one school only takes kids from out of state. I'll say that because they want the most money. They will only take kids from out of state because they will make more money. And I just like, you guys are awful. You're about equity and inclusion and artistic creative stuff, but they're like, Moneric, we have a budget. I was like, unbelievable, man. And so I wanted to be, and I hate this word, but a disruptor. I'm like, look, this is a different way to do it. This is not the linear myopic way of doing it. Again, I could be wrong. And that's great. Again, I say it again, I have no ego with this.

You don't need to come to my school if you don't want to. That's super duper pooper scooper. But at least there's a choice now. And that's what we're saying. Here's this path too. Though it sounds like if you get the BFA, you're gonna end up a billionaire from Tesla or you're gonna be starting restaurants. So it sounds like that's not such a bad path either. Well, I don't know anymore, man. That Tesla stock is dropping. He just laid off 10% of his staff. So I'm sure they're still doing fine. He's doing okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, well, let's take a quick break. And on the back end of the break, I want to talk a little bit about the admissions process, and I may even have some bonus questions for you as well.

[41:17] Charlie Murphy: All right, we are back with Michael Minarik, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the audition process, really the audition and application process for IAMT. So first, I just want to talk a little bit about like for you, what are you looking for in a student? What makes you say, hey, this person, I want them to come on board?

[41:34] Michael Minarik: The number one I think I look for is a happy, kind human being. And I'm being dead serious. I'm like I say, I'm a kind autocrat, but we actually write on the wall. I don't know if you have to censor this. I write quotes on the walls all over the studios that we've rented. And one of them is don't be a dick. This business is so, so small. And you know that, you know, uh, we're connected through your wife and Leo and all these people. If you make it this long, as old as we are, that we should be in hospice and adult diapers, we know basically everybody in this industry, right? So if you're a poop face, you're not working. That's how this works, right? Because there's very many talented people out there.

And if you're a poop face and you're talented, there are nice people who are also talented, and they're gonna get hired. I just talked to a casting director who just cast a very prominent national tour. She's not gonna rehire 70% of those kids out there because they came out of schools and they believe that they are entitled and they deserve, and it's just like it's done. I'm gonna hire other people. I have another friend who was a music supervisor of a Broadway show that just closed, and he was like, I will not hire anybody under 27 anymore because these kids just won't even come to work. They just for some reason the work ethic is not there. And I'm like, well, that's not our school. So I admit hardworking, good ethics in the sense of that work respect, kind people.

And if I hear of any, I will say crap talking or anything that to hurt any other students that way. The door is right there. And it's in your student agreement that says, if you do any of these things, there's the door. And I've kicked out many, many kids for that. One kid came back, he thought I thought it was lip service, and he came back and then he booked Kinky Boots and he booked a movie, but he's like, I really thought that this was other places. I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no. If you and I get to spend two years together as a blessing on this earth, that we get to enjoy each other's philosophy and training, we're gonna do it in a kind, respectful, honest, happy manner. We can teach you how to sing, dance, and act.

Okay, we can do that. Of course, we look for talent, it's important to have talent, but again, in this subjective industry, I could take somebody who can't sing or dance, and I can put them on film and TV and they're gonna be a movie star. So, like, right? It's not just musical theater. We can do a lot of, but I want you to be kind and hardworking. And if that's not you, don't apply. And when I tell this to parents, everyone is like, don't screw up. Like they're looking at their kid, they're like, What? We're fine, we're fine. But again, you know this. If you start talking smack in this industry, it's over. Like it's just it's done. I talked to somebody who just cast or was in a Broadway show, and he's like, you know, Monaric, we hired 70% of our cast from people we worked with before because they were nice people.

70%. That means like four people actually have a shot at getting that job that didn't know the associate director of the director. So truly, on the Zoom, I do a Zoom with every kid that we accept for the head of the school and the admissions, and I say, This is a non-negotiable thing. If you're a poop face, if you're mean to people, I don't allow clapping in my class for the sole reason of I don't want kids to define themselves by external adoration or adjudication. Let's say Charlie, you get up there and you sing a song and you're great, and then I get up there and I get less claps from you. I'm already defining myself as worse than. So I stopped all the clapping in my class. And at first the kids hate it, but now they love it.

They're like, I'm not doing it for the people behind the table. I'm doing it for me. And I know that wasn't your question, but I also love stoic philosophy. And Seneca says, to whom do you give your freedom to? And we try to teach the kids that freedom of your art is yours until you give it to somebody else. Don't give it to people behind the table. Don't give it to anybody else. Keep it for the love of the self of when you do your art. And you can't fully do that. And this is why if there's a poop face in your class being poopy to you, and you can't be a fully complimented artist giving your freedom of art. So get the out of my school because I'm not gonna deal with it. And also, when you come out of my school and you have a stamp on that, all the casting directors now know, oh, they're good kids. They come from Monaric school. Those kids are gonna work. They will come to work every day. They have that stamp. That's what I like.

[45:07] Charlie Murphy: Well, and talking about the literal, so you mentioned this sort of Zoom discussion that happened. What are the platforms or how can someone audition for you? What does that look like in terms of, you know, the process of am I sending in videos in advance? Am I doing different Zoom things? Am I doing anything live? How does that work in terms of?

[45:22] Michael Minarik: So we look for your softball video first. We want to see if you're a three tool, five tool player. You're gonna send me those, all right? We're definitely gonna send you those notes. Anyone go? Yeah, if you're a five tool player, I want one soto on the team. Um I'll just take a power hitter at this point. I don't care about the tools. I can stick you in right field. That's fine. Just hit the ball. Just God, for God's sake. But so the process after the softball video, I know what am I doing in terms of how to do it? Yeah, you go to our website and you upload some videos, right? You have a little dance video, acting. We don't really look to acting my favorite is acting videos. And I was like, this is my favorite.

I would go to some of these fairs and they're like, hey, do you want to see a monologue? I'm like, can't I see if you can act through your song? And they're like, oh. I was like, why isn't acting in your song first? This school, I say if I'm watching you sing a song, we have a problem. I want to watch you tell a story through the medium of song. If I'm watching you dance, we have a big problem. I want you to watch you tell a story through the medium of dance. So it's really funny. So I don't need a monologue. I can see in 15 seconds if you're acting through your song. So song, like two contrasting. I dance video definitely because we're, you know, we have four levels of dance at our school. I actually call them districts now.

I don't like levels, it feels like competitive. But now they all think they're in like district two, like the fishing district. I don't know. So we have just and so we look for that. Then you do it on accepted or through our website or admissions process. Um, and that's really kind of it. I don't, I don't know. And then there's a Zoom interview with you, it seems like after.

[46:37] Charlie Murphy: Oh, sorry, yeah. So if you're gonna do the videos and then you have a conversation, yeah. You can choose to have a video with me and your parents, have a chat about what this place is and say, okay, we've been gonna what are you? I'm like, well, we're a chemical engineering school with a minor in singing. And they're like, wait a second, and then we just make some jokes on Google Chrome, we have a good time. And then usually after that, the parents are like, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Like, I don't want to, you know, say whatever, but usually after every zoom that we've done, the parents like, yeah, we're done, we're in, let's go. Because I think financially they start to realize wait, I'm gonna pay for all of his connections.

That's what I'm paying for you. I'm gonna pay because he knows the resident director of Moulin Rouge, who is his production assistant, and he does a master class. I want to meet that guy. Like, that's how this business works. So instead, that's what they're realizing. When I when I break it down quality, also I want to put this out there. I think all parents should look at how much their hourly classes are. Because if you're dropping 60 a year and you have one acting class a semester, that acting class is costing you four thousand dollars for an acting class. That is the most depressing. If anyone's ever done that for BFA, I remember that. Where people go in a class, we'd be like, that meditation class was $400.

That was like we I just remember these quotes. I don't know if classmates used to do it every single class sophomore year. Would you be like, well, that costs a thousand dollars. Told you you were a numbers guy. I freaking told you, Charlie. So I tell the I tell the parents, look at our class, right? If you're doing 20 hours and it costs this much, how much you get in? They're like, oh my god, your classes are like $11 a class or something. I was like, right. And that class is four grand. So what are you getting more out of with your money? Also, and I thought right about this as well. Remember that if you spend $120,000 on this, that was $120,000. You could have invested in Tesla or bought a house or a condo or put into an annuity for God's sake.

You're not just losing the money on the education, also the inverse of what you could have invested that money into. And the opportunity cost of Rock of Ages. You could have invested in Rock of Ages in Benaly produce. Yes, none of you wanted to, except for eight people, and it all worked out. So ha ha. Um, but also, and not to destroy your listeners here, but an article just came out, and you can edit this out if you want to, but an article just came out and said, unless you're getting a STEM degree, you are leaving college with a wealth negative. The first time in history, even if you're paying 25 grand a year, you are leaving college with a wealth negative. And I it angers me. So when I tell people, I guess I don't and I don't think that's new for a theater degree.

I mean, that that I think we kind of you know a theater degree has a negative ROI in terms of just it's it's but it's not here. You're saying now it's across the board. Now it's not all liberal arts. If it's not STEM, so that's why I'm like, look, go to those schools, but major in poly sci and minor in it, and at least you have something else. Not that poly sci is even better but like major in chemical engineering before AI takes all of our jobs so like I it's just the numbers don't make sense to me and that's and that but again for all your parents I'm a poo-poo face they make sense to you go there have a blast.

[49:12] Charlie Murphy: Well but I mean I think that's part of why I think parents are actually now more comfortable with the idea of a BFA in theater as opposed to a BA in English or a BA in other things partially because they're saying to themselves well I I don't know what what is a positive ROI what what is what kind of jobs are going to be out there in the 21st century and to the point of like yeah with AI with all these other things like communication skills and all those those skills are going to be valuable kind of regardless of the degree itself right that's aesthetically wonderful point that never thought about before actually that that's great if they're all on the same level of what that is then a BA in English and a BA in literature and B A in our history all the exact same but you made a solid point too like a lot of my friends your computer programmers aren't getting hired anymore because AI is just gonna program it all for them anyway.

I I don't disagree with you in that I I always just tell the parents you made a solid point just look at the qualitative money that you're spending and what are you getting out of your ROI so true and when your point of FAFSA too I mean there are if you're at a position where you go you can afford school cheaply and it's four years and it's free and all this amazing right that but you're talking about parents who maybe aren't in that position who are going hey we have the money for school that would be people obviously but to go do I want to spend 6000 here do I want to spend 2000 here what would the opportunity costs be there yeah those are tough decisions I opportunity I freaking love your vernacular yes thank you opportunity cost you can steal it you can use my name you can use our no no no no I'm just saying you can use whatever you need to use.

[50:46] Michael Minarik: That's fine um baseball talent that's so let's talk about let's talk about so in terms of the application. Is there anything else that factors in for you in terms of stuff they have to do?

[50:54] Michael Minarik: So they upload videos. Are they writing essays? Is there anything else on the application in terms of stuff that you'd be looking for to admit them?

[51:00] Michael Minarik: Yes, all of the recommendations are more important to me than anything because I want to know that you're a good person. Like we, if you don't have any recommendations, I'm like, oh, you're a poop face. Great, thanks. Bye. I get recommendations from kids who are moderately, if you want to say talented or whatever the heck you want to believe in that, but they're like, these are the best kids. I'm like, done. I want that one. That's the one I want. Because again, with 1200 hours, I can teach you to dance. I guarantee you, unless you're tone-deaf, which we're gonna know in a video that you're not, you can teach you to sing, and I can definitely teach you to act. Like, what I also teach in acting is not therapy.

I don't believe that theater is therapy. I don't do substitution, I don't think about your dead dog while you're in a scene. We do stuff that was taught to me based on your breath about being present, about being in this moment and using the tools of your breath and just listening in this moment. I do a lot of breath work at the school before every acting class, we do 10 minutes of breath work. A lot of the kids, to be honest, say they learn more about themselves than they are as a person they actually did. I was like, well, you have to as an artist, right? If you don't know who you are, you don't know what the hell you're doing. A lot of these kids come out of school, they're not storytellers first.

And whenever the kids come out of our schools, all the casting directors are like, Minarik, your kids are storytellers first, bar none. She's like, this is an acting conservatory with a bunch of stuff sprinkled in. I'm like, great, because it permeates through the entire thing. But truly, I want them to be happy, happy people. Because if they don't do this, then go off and be a veterinarian, but still be in the present moment and seek your joy and get a snack and pet a dog, for God's sake.

[52:11] Michael Minarik: Like it seems like for you, the talent of it all, as you're watching these videos, it is about a bar that you're crossing. You're not tone deaf. There's enough there that I can work with, but it's not like we're gonna take the 50 best performances we see, or we're only taking you if we think you're at an elite level. We're saying you have to be good, but then we care about who you are as a human being.

[52:29] Michael Minarik: Yeah, no, look, we have some stupidly talented people. I mean, sure. If I had auditions against some of these people now, I'd be like, I'm out. Like we have girls and guys who are dancing at elite levels who are singing like, you know, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Stephanie Block. Like, these kids do not— you go on our Instagram and you'll see the kids are stupidly talented, but I also don't want automatons. A lot of casting directors, like, I know exactly what college they go to when they come out to see me because they're getting the exact same audition advice from their teachers. And I—it's not them, it's their teachers through them as an automaton.

[53:00] Michael Minarik: I don't want that. I want individuals and I want random, interesting artists. We have a kid who I absolutely love who found a mannequin somewhere, and in every one of our spring concerts, or he uses the mannequin as his like scene partner. I'm like, that's the most random crap I've ever seen in my life, and I love every second of that. And you know, uh you know, the performance opportunities we also have. We have spring concerts, we have fall concerts, um, we also do miscast concerts, and then the kids can make their own concerts. We have a dance concert tonight. They want to do, yeah. But I want parents to hear, we have some of the most elite kids in our school. We have kids that have turned down quote unquote the best schools, whatever that means anymore in the country to come here first.

And but for me to accept them, I want them to be kind and happy. That's what I want. And what what else do you think? So other than then they're kindness who they are human being, the the barrier to talent entry uh that you're looking at. What else are you thinking about as you're filling out a 50? You sort of you sort of mentioned, yeah, you know, hey, there's some weightless movement now, and we're having, of course, you're having these conversations now. Your class is nearly full. It's this is gonna be released, but we're still talking in April at this point. As you're kind of doing that filling out and looking at the balance of your class, are you thinking about stuff like gender balance and height balance and size balance and racial diversity? How much do those kind of things factor into the who the 50 are that show up for you?

[54:09] Michael Minarik: Yeah, I I mean to be honest, I don't. I just pick the nicest people. If you if you're if you're a turtle, great. If you're uh 19 feet tall, great. I don't I don't want to box myself in like that. Like we're you can for me, there are turtles at your university. Yeah, we have three Tortugas at our university and they're amazing. Um, I didn't give them any scholarships though, because F turtles. Um, you know, so like I I just want I I think putting myself into a construct means that I have to leave other people out. If I have if I have seven, you know, I'm a Czechoslovakian. If I have seven Czechoslovakians, another Chickel Sovakian comes and I'm like, Oh, I already have my seven Czechoslovakians.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm gonna take people who look to have that I don't know how to say it, that spark of excitement of life. And if they're 50 blonde, great. If they're 50 African American, great. If they're 50, it doesn't. I want the I want people that love to do this, and that's what I'm looking for. So I don't have constructs like that. Even though we have 50, most of our classes are around 12. Because what we do is we break them up into levels. So we have one, two, three, four dance levels. Those dance classes will be first and second years combined. So you're gonna have about 20 to 25 kids, maybe less in those dance classes, maybe like 15 or whatever. But usually acting classes range from between like eight and 15 kids.

They're not so when we say 50, but they're broken down into a lot more personal classes that we have. Like sometimes we even have classes of six kids in our song interpretation classes. So I just want to make sure parents hear that, right? They're not overloaded. I will never ever probably ever take more than a hundred kids. I don't ever want to take more than that.

[55:35] Michael Minarik: Yeah, and that's across the two years. And you're saying with that also with that large of a class that you're able to kind of choose shows and performance opportunities, maybe to the classes you have, as opposed to saying, hey, we need a certain number of this or certain number of that. Do you go? We'll pick the shows that work based on whatever the balance. Yeah, man, and it's so great too because well, the kids pick the shows, right? So they're like, we want to do rent. And I'm like, go ahead, I don't care. And they just cast in whatever stage managership. But the shows that I bring in, it's great. They're like, okay, this is what we need. I'm like, sounds good. I got 115 kids because the third year is sometimes is more spam there.

And I also have alumni. So if we can't use all these kids, these a lot of and what's too great about you in New York City, you know, we have professionals. So sometimes what will happen is we'll have all the kids there, but then we'll have two Broadway performers be the leads of this of the of the company because we can fill those. Like we just did a show with Kevin Duda, who's a friend of mine. I don't know if you know Kevin from a long time ago. He just produced a show based on Pygmalion, but like as a girl who's a busker in the subway, we couldn't follow the roles. So he got three professionals to come in and do it. So the kids are gonna work with professionals, and what they're now again expanding their sphere of influence. So we do that too. Super cool.

[56:38] Michael Minarik: Yeah, I don't think I asked enough about the third year. You mentioned that. So what would that be if you know if someone were to stand? You said mentioned it could be focused on directing specifically. Yeah, it's directing and acting, it's more a la carte, it's like a master's, right? So what you do is you have to come to my class, not because I'm a crazy narcissist just because we do scenes, and you have to come to the other scenes, the directing class because they do scenes. Every other class you can pick and choose. So if you want to take 30 hours of dance that week, go for it. If the next week you want to take all the voice classes, go for it. So it's like you go into the cafeteria and choose because your structure is kind of done.

You still pay the same amount of tuition, but it's just you what do you need to work on? Instead of going to BDC and paying 35 bucks for dance class, come back here and just kick your butt because you want to do more dance. And it sounds like you said that's about 15-ish students might choose to do that.

[57:18] Michael Minarik: It it's it we offer it and they choose. Like, you know, last year we had well, this finishing up year we have 13. Like next year we might have 11. The year after that we might have 20, but I always want to kind of cap it at around 15 for those third years. And now that we have two separate spaces, we have a theater space across the street that I built, so we have our own black box theater, and the main space, the kids kind of usually live over in the theater space for most of their classes. Yep.

[57:39] Michael Minarik: Um the last question I was asked about you you mentioned something about um you get free uh studios for life um as part of an being an IAMT student. What does that look like? How does that how can you literally do that? How you just show up and you have a key card that lets you in forever?

[57:53] Michael Minarik: Yeah, you reserve the space on a Google Drive. Also, all our teachers can use it for free too. I want, I want my goal is to have professionals and amateurs always kind of symbiotically living together. So if Liz Pacini, who teaches for us every single week, needs to come and work on a piece for her audition, use the space. If I, you know, we had another new teacher, uh, Martin Sola, who also teaches at Yale for voice, and he teaches with us right now. He's like, I want to use the space. If we I I want, I don't my goal isn't to make a yacht. I don't need a yacht. I shop at Old Navy, I can live on tuna. I want kids to be the least financial have the least amount of financial impediments possible with an artist.

There's a reason why Monet painted 9,000 haystacks because he didn't have any debt. He sat there looking at little waterlities, like another water lily. Like he was doing his because he that he can be an artist, right? So what they do is, you know, after school's over, school's over at 4:30, from about 4:30 to about eight or nine o'clock. Our internal operations manager truly lives across the street, and now we're calling it the dorm because all the kids are moving into this one building. Like four bedrooms for $3,100. It's ridiculous. And so they're all moving there. And so the kids just stay there and they reserve the spaces for 45 minutes to an hour, and then other kids will come in. And now that we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, we'll have eight studios now moving forward.

It's tons of other kids have survival jobs. Some kids only can do it on the weekends. But my favorite thing is when I love to, I love, love, love, love, love to see professionals here working on their tap audition, or the students next door trying to work on their like agent audition. And they help each other because the person maybe has been in the business for 10 years is tired and sad and like, oh, this is really freaking hard, blah, blah, blah. And there's a kid being like, oh my gosh, tell me all about your life. And so they're helping each other with the joy of the symbiotic energy of moving forward.

[59:32] Michael Minarik: Totally makes sense. Well, and you know, it was the other note I had to clean up, was just you you mentioned sort of real estate help. But what does that look like? Is it just, hey, I can I can talk to you about places that are cheap? Is it get specific deals? Sounds like there is a specific deal across the street.

[59:44] Michael Minarik: Yeah, we buy everybody their own apartment. I'm kidding. Um that's why you live on tuna, because you wouldn't move to Hawaii. All those their own co-op. So you know Sarah Salzburg. So Sarah Salzburg helped write 25th Putnam County Spilling Bee. She started a real estate company called Bohemia Reality up here at Washington Heights. Um, we also have uh two other brokers that work specifically with us. So when you're enrolled, we hook you up with all these different real estate brokers and they start to help you with your search. Or we also put you in an alumni group or a second-year group because kids start to change apartments. So a lot of some alumni, like we have an alumni who's going up for a cruise ship for a year.

Take their one bedroom. Like, take we help you, and now that we have over 300 alumni, there's all these apartments up here. Nobody's ever not found a place. But again, like I said before, my favorite part about that is that you choose what your room and board's gonna be. It's not as getting a little real world experience of after school, what everyone's gonna have to learn how to do. Like, what do you want? Do you want to eat McDonald's every day? Good luck. See what happens to your, you know, your sugar content. I want to see what happens. Oddly enough, though, these kids eat McDonald's every day and they're perfectly fine. Like, if I ate it, dancing 19 hours a week, what do you expect? Or 10 hours a week, is that it's so much.

10 hours. Um, so like uh, but yeah, but that's really what we and again, since I was in real estate, I'll look over the contracts for the people and help them out. And then we have parents get together as guarantors too. Do you all have ferrets? Do you all need a ferret apartment? Ferrets are disgusting. Um, like, does anybody want a cat? Cats are here to kill us, nobody should buy a cat. Right? So, like, this is so we help you with all that stuff. So once you leave the school, you're not flying in from Mars and figuring out your life. You've already got it figured out. You're ready to go.

[1:01:10] Michael Minarik: Yep, I love it. All right, let's take it one more short break and we'll do a couple bonus questions and wrap up on the back end.

[1:01:14] Charlie Murphy: I love bonus questions.

[1:01:16] Michael Minarik: All right, we're back with Michael Minarik, and now I feel I've oversold these bonus questions because Michael's very excited.

[1:01:22] Michael Minarik: So excited. Um but I just want to talk a little bit about producing, right? Because I think we've had other artists go on the podcast and talk a little bit about that. And but basically, just to hear about the skill set that you feel like you formed. And obviously, you mentioned being a numbers person and some of the sort of skills that you feel like you have. You'd already been in real estate. But like, talk to me about what that journey was from hey, I'm I'm in a show and now I've got a pseudonym, and then eventually you're gonna be producing other shows. What was adding that hyphen like for you in terms of producing?

[1:01:47] Michael Minarik: So I when I was in when I was in Ur in town, um back in 2003, that's how old I am. The producer of that was of the Araka group, and they just sort of produced, and you're gonna love this. So we were doing Ur in Town at the ART San Francisco Theater, The Geary, and they were also producing a little new show called Wicked. It was next door at the current. And I got to be really good friends with the producers, and they were like, Do you want to come see our new show and let us know what you think? I'm like, sure. So we all went over to watch Wicked. And I was like, I think this is good. And I looked down the line and like all the girls are crying. I'm like, Oh, you're gonna make a billion dollars.

So we're watching it, it's not bad. Yeah, and Norbert Leo Butts was staying in the same building. I was like, What are you in? He's like, I don't know, it's some show about like witches and crap. And I was like, All right, cool. So I was like, look, I'm really interested in this because I was a business finance guy in college. All my friends are in hedge funds, like they're all finance pros. They're nice moms and dads, they're all the nice finance bros, they have kids. So, like, um, so I thought to myself, I was like, I don't just want to be a cog in a machine the rest of my life. I don't like, I like being told what to do by people that I respect, and that I think that everybody does. But there's some times that I'm in shows being like, I don't like this.

Also, I don't like the way you're marketing this. I don't like the way you're casting this, I don't like the way this scene goes into this scene. I was like, I want to be more involved. So he was like, So, this uh wonderful person, one of my one of my really, really close friends, Hank Unger from the Rocket Group, was like, if you don't know who the Rocket Group is, they basically do a ton of merch for the producing The Osiders, they produce Wicked, they produce so and so they were like, Hey, we're producing a show called The Scene with Patty Patricia Heaton and Tony Chaloupe. And I was like, Tony Shalou's my favorite actor of all time. He's like, Do you want to raise some money and learn how to be the associate producer?

I'm like, sure. So he was like, You can raise this much money. So, what did I do? I called my allergist, I called my friends. I was like, hey, people look, you want to be involved with this thing, and I raised the money like in two weeks, and so we put up the show. And I was gonna go to Broadway, but then Tony Shalub and Patty Heatens, from what I heard, TV show didn't schedule, so it didn't go anywhere. So all my investors lost their money. But it wasn't a it was a it was an okay amount, but it was a really good show. It was by Teresa Rebeck and uh Rebecca Taishman, and it was really, really good. And I was like, ooh, I like this. I like being on this side saying this song needs to go here, this needs to do so.

I kept looking, and then I was doing a show, and then I started producing cabarets. And the reason why for this, Charlie, is because a lot of my friends at the time and myself, I went over on Broadway, we're all doing regional theater gigs, but we were all really talented, and I kept going to see the same cabarets with Shoshana Bean and Cheyenne Jackson. They're crazy talented. But I was like, there's other people out there to do cabarets. So I started producing a cabaret called First Look. So what I did was I had all these people audition and put up a cabaret for four people, and it sold out every night because all other friends could finally see them perform in New York City because they're not out in St. Louis.

I was like, ooh, I like this. Then when I was in um, I was in a show called Dangerous Beauty. A kid was there and he's like, I heard you produce stuff. And I was like, Yeah, he goes, I got a show called Fat Camp the Musical. And I was like, That's the best title I've ever heard of my life. And he was like, It's all about people learning to love themselves. And I was like, done, I'm gonna do this. So I got together, I was kind of working on it, did some readings, and then when I was in Rock of Ages, I started producing Rock of Ages, and it became this big hit. My producing party there, Carl Levin, who now was the producer of the he's one of the producers of the Tony Awards. He's like, I want to produce Fat Camp with you.

I was like, sounds good. But I what I learned about that mostly is that me as an actor is the least important thing of the show. And I used to think that I was the most important. Like when I'm there and during tech and all this other stuff, and I have all these. What is my motivation? I need myself to shut up because costumes and props and lights and marketing and budgets and stuff. I need to learn how to do my job without having to go to all the powers that be and ask them for either help or like let what about my character? I learned a lot how to be a self-sufficient performer, which then got me hired more and more and more because they don't have to worry about me. And that was a really big deal for me.

[1:05:08] Charlie Murphy: Well, and could you just just for any of our listeners, maybe who haven't listened to all the artist episodes where we do talk about producing a little bit, could you just define a little bit of, you know, I think most people kind of understand this means I raised money so I have a stake in the show? Oh, sorry, yeah. Just kind of what does that because you're mentioning a bunch of different things that producers can do. I think it is kind of a nebulous job to a lot of people.

[1:05:26] Michael Minarik: So yeah, okay. So if you're the lead producer of a show, you probably have ownership of that show, right? If you go to see how to dance in Ohio, there's four people on the top, and there's 90 people underneath it, right? So the people that bought and owned the rights to the show have optioned the show. So if we're doing Charlie MVP, the musical, and all show. You, the writer of that, say, Hey Mineric, I want to option my show to you. Great. I now own your show for a certain period of time, right? So let's say I option, I give you 5,000 bucks for two years. I have two years to do something with it that you approve of. Let's say in two years it's going really, really well. I reoption it, right? But I need more help.

[1:06:12] Michael Minarik: So I bring other people on and I start to give away equity, my equity of 100% to different producing partners so they can make money, just like any sort of stock or corporation. It's the exact same thing. But then what happens is you have a social media. You have 100% even though you've optioned it to the writer. So that's what you all got to get as a writer. Well, it's a great idea for the writer in the sense where they have no stake in the game. So if they lose everything, but like you also have writers' guild money, right? So let's say you do it. I think you get 2% as a librettist, 2% as a composer, and 2% as a book writer. So if you get all that, you get that of the gross every time this thing is running.

And also, if you want to put that in and say, hey Moneric, I want you to pay me $10,000 a year for all my work on this if you want to option this as well and give me $5,000 for the rights. You can do whatever you want with that, right? Or you can say I still want to keep 10% equity. But let's just say I own 100%. So then what happens is I go to let's say I don't know. I'm just Elizabeth and say, hey, do you want to become a partner on your husband's musical? And she goes, No, I can't stand them. We're in a fight right now over Broccoli. Very realistic, yeah. Right, very realistic, right? So that most. So then what happens is I don't know if you can hear kids singing, but they're all auditioning.

Sound great. I sound great. Um, I think she's singing into the roots. So then what happens is I start to loot my equity. But then as you dilute your equity, then you need maybe some associate producers to come on. What that is, is this is that I'm an associate producer of Rock of Ages. So they said one of the guys like, I'm gonna give you a deal of a one for three, which means every three dollars that the company or the show makes, you get a dollar at that one for three. So they're giving you a certain percentage. I know of a show where somebody offered a one for nine, which is the most unethical thing I've ever heard of my life. So every nine dollars of profit, you'd get a dollar. That is a horrible deal, right?

Um, no, and that show lost everything. So what happens is that I'm oh great. I didn't even lose my one for nine, then really, right. So and the writers didn't lose it because the writers and the actors, they all like also don't realize that the producers are the ones, the investors are losing or gaining the money. You're making a buck fifty a week on Broadway. The producers are the ones that have risked all this money. A lot of people are like, oh, producers are poop heads. I was like, well, we don't have producers and investors, you don't have a job. So let's just make sure we all understand that, right? So I have myself owned a certain percentage of Rock of Ages because I raised enough money to buy a stake of Rock of Ages, right? My investors make money and I also make money from that. So and your investors make money off of your stake, basically.

[1:08:22] Michael Minarik: That's correct. They're your investors as opposed to investors in Rock of Ages directly, even though they're my investors, and I'm under the umbrella of the general partner who brought me in. I don't want to say it's like a multi-level marketing thing, but it feels pseudo-like that. But I don't make money, like they don't keep making money. But then the great thing is I love my friend Hank said, so if I invested in Wicked, yeah, you win. But then the tour goes out. You have the opportunity, but not the obligation to invest in all the subsidiary productions. And that's really where people are starting to make their money nowadays. Broadway is a very difficult difference. It always has been, but now you're having 28 million dollar musicals with operating costs of a million dollars, right?

So what they really want to do is like legally blonde, I from what I heard supposedly lost a certain amount of money on Broadway, but made a ton of it back on the tour. And of course, all of it back for regional theaters. I have a friend who wrote a Broadway musical who closed in six months, but he's made at least six figures every year from the regional theater and Anslayer writes of it. And also those investors will also make those because I make money when Rock of Ages gets licensed. So every time, and now everybody and their mother is doing Rock of Ages all over the country. So I get little checks from all like you know, if Gateway Play is doing Rock of Ages, I get you know a nice steak dinner or whatever the heck it is because of my own.

Um I can get guac and Chipotle, but that's how the business works. Now it's also for most people all write-off. Like I have very, very wealthy friends who are like, listen, I don't really give a damn if this does well or not, because this doesn't really move my financial needle, but I'm gonna give you, I'm just making this up 75k. That is also a write-off to the million dollars I make every single year, and I get to go to opening nights, and I get to tell people this is the best part, that I'm a producer. Probably. I had some friends during the 2009 recession. They're like Moneric, girls don't want to date bankers anymore. I was like, Yeah, because you're evil. And he's like, Yeah, but what do we do?

I'm like, I don't know. I'm I'm raising money for Rock of Ages. Like, oh, wait a second. My friends are kind of sober back realistic. I can tell girls that I'm a producer in Rock of Ages. I was like, you guys are pathetic. So they gave me money to be producers, and then what happens? They're like house seats and watching the show. And so people give money to shows for different reasons. Some people, if you live in Iowa, would just want to say you're a part of the New York City scene. I know somebody that invested in a current Broadway show that just got really interesting reviews. And they're like, you know what? It's my first foray into it. I wanted to see what this was like. So that's how the whole structure kind of works.

[1:10:35] Michael Minarik: But how does it, and so obviously, your finance bros are just showing up on opening night, and there's that kind of level of quote unquote producer who, you know, just get house seats. How does that relate to what you're actually doing in terms of say, hey, I want to talk to marketing and I wanted to how does it really how does your investment relate to sort of your So I I went to all I went to as many marketing meetings as I could. The difficulty for me though is because I was in the show that I produced. That was odd. Like some of the cast members, not very nicely thought I was a narc. And they're like, oh, you bought your way in. I was like, um, I've had four national tours and lay miz before this, so I'm I'm fine.

Thank you very much. And so that that wasn't the best, but I went to, you know, in casting sometimes asked me, but to be honest, my producing partner said, I don't want you to be involved in casting because I don't want these people on the show to think that you have a say over this. And he was so smart about that. So when they asked me, hey, is this person coming in? I can say, I don't know. But it just depends on the deal that you have as the associate producer of that show. Right.

[1:11:30] Michael Minarik: In terms of what like a hiring, firing power. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I would go sometimes to castings, or I would, you know, I definitely looked at marketing because back then I, to be honest, was angry. They're like, we're gonna buy a full page ad in New York Times. I'm like, why? Like, just go online. This is in 2008. Like nowadays, you know, there's so many TikTok influencers that I think the new marketing is go pay them for a commercial for your show. Don't buy a New York Times ad. Get somebody in theater that has a retention rate of 900,000. That's like a CNN commercial. Like, what are you doing? But it's funny to watch the old guard still try to market the Broadway shows the way they used to, and not realizing why can't we get the younger demographic in here?

I was like, because the younger demographic gets their news from TikTok. They don't watch TV, they don't watch YouTube, they go on TikTok and get their news. So if you have a TikTok influencer that says go see Charlie MVP softball, right? They're gonna go see that show. But there's so I think that so I had a say in different things. I also, you know, was a producer and investor in the national tour in Australia and different subsidies of Rock of Ages, but I didn't I always had such a smaller level, my say was down here. I wasn't a jump. Now in Fat Camp, I own 50% of it. So my say was way up here. And so I was like, okay, we're doing this and we're doing this. And now that I own the school, my say is the say.

So I learned throughout my business career what partners I need, what they can bring into it, and also how much say do I want in a show? Because some people just want to raise money and say, I don't want to touch any of this stuff. Right.

[1:12:53] Michael Minarik: Um, and then by the way, also other producers, I didn't give themselves a weekly fee. So I never did that, but there are other producers out there that'll be like, hey, you're gonna raise your 50 grand, but I'm also gonna pay myself five grand a week on top of the operating costs. I'm like, whoa, I somebody once said you can't make a living as a producer because you can make a killing. And I think that's the perfect way to say it. You can't make a living, but you can make a killing. If you hit like 32 red and you get one of those shows, it's just you're in Bali all day long on passive income. I mean, and that's where yeah, I think it's really helpful for for parents and students who could uh it's confusing, I think the different levels of producers and yes, it's like they're the most important person, but sometimes they're like, not an important person at all.

And it but just that word producer is true for all of them, you know. I love that you said because people walk around the city, like I'm producer. I'm like, ah, you gave 50 bucks. No, I mean, there are people who would introduce themselves to Jag uh Elizabeth and be like, I'm one of the producers of Jag, and she's like, Are you? No, and and you know what's funny? Like, am I gonna say this? I don’t give a damn. So when I was I'm in equity, and I was in equity when I was producing Rock of Ages, but they wouldn't let me come to any membership meetings because I was a lead producer of a nymph show. I had a Tony nomination as a producer of Rock of Ages. That didn't matter, but because I was a lead producer of a nymph show, I wasn't allowed to be in those membership meetings.

I want to say, you want me in there. I know what's happening on both sides. You want and they're like, I'm sorry you're not allowed to come to these meetings. I was like, all right, whatever. So when I started producing Nymph, and Nymph was hard, man, because I had to raise all that money, right? You're not your music theater festival, and can we define nymph for people?

[1:14:21] Michael Minarik: Oh, it's the New York musical theater festival. Yeah, I don't know if it's still around anymore, but it was like a subsidiary, not necessarily it was a competitor of the fringe. And and when when Fat Camp came out in 2008, we uh look, I'm very proud of it. We won Best of the Fest. We won, we sold it every performance. I had a bidding war between two major producers on Broadway. We picked one, the show was about to go to Broadway. Actually, at our Broadway theater, and then uh something happened, and we did it at the vineyard one more time, and they changed the title of my show to Gigantic, which I by the way, I also learned that if you put your show into a nonprofit, the nonprofit then has full reign over your show.

And I was like, wait a second. So they changed the title of the show, they changed all the script stuff, we got bad reviews, and the show died. So all of the money and all the time and all the heart that I put into this show, now the show's dead because it got a bad New York Times review, and then we lost our theater and we were done. So that taught me a lot too about producing. And but what I'm saying is in Nymph, like as a lead producer, I had to raise the 40,000 to put that in and to get the props. And by the way, Alex Timbers was our very first director, who's now a massive star, but he would directed Fat Camp Original. So, through all of those things, I've learned so much as an actor that not to be myopic, yeah. That I don't want to go into all every place every day and say, please give me a job. I want to be like, I bet I can build jobs. And that's what I decided to do.

[1:15:33] Michael Minarik: So right now, like I went back to my first EPA in 17 years. I've been to an EPA in 17 years. I just got bored this morning. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go sit there. I sat there for like an hour. I'm like, I gotta go back up to my school and do some stuff. But I was like, you know, now I have the opportunity. Do I want to go audition again? Do I want to go do other stuff in my life? Or but I I implore every parent and actor out there, I don't train reactive actors, I train proactive actors. Let's talk a little bit about that because I want to the that's my last sort of question about the school is just to hear a little bit about the growth of you know, in the grand scheme of things, pretty new programs still. How are you changing, adapting, growing, reacting, you know, you know, to the world that you're seeing, the sort of post-COVID world, especially? Like, how has the school changed in the years that you've been working with?

[1:16:13] Michael Minarik: It's changed only in the sense that I've made it less streamlined into just musical theater actor, right? It's like when we do new works, we have kids be like, Mr. Mercury, I think I want to be a stage manager. I'm like, good, they make $3,500 a week as a PSM. Go for it, have a great time. It's a stable, you become a resident director. Mr. America, I really want to be an agent. Great, we'll get you an internship with the talent agent. Mr. America, I really want to be a cast director. Great, here's an internship with Scott Wojik and casting. Mr. America, I really, really want to learn about producing. Great. Have an internship with my friends over at Wicked. Like now that I've realized that because I'm old and tired and should be in hospice, right?

That these tributary arms that I kind of have, I'm able to make phone calls and say, I'm gonna help you with whatever medium you want to do in this art industry. I again I have zero power about getting you a job. And anybody that says they do, I won't say they're a liar, but like really I don't. I can help open doors, but you're the one that has to go through the door and make those connections after I mean my friends are your friends, right? And that's the whole point. So, you know, I have kids all the time saying, Hey, can you help me out with an internship? I'm like, Yeah, let's go. And I will write to everybody I know, Mr. Rack, I want to work in, you know, as a as a legal assistant for stuff because I'm thinking about going to law school.

Like, when our kids now, you know, studying to go into law school. I'm like, great, I'll help you out when you get done if you want to do some artistry because I know tons of lawyers now because I own a business, and that's what you need when you own a business. So I've realized that we're not myopic, and that that's why I want to change the name to something else. And because I want people to realize this is a school about philosophy and the arts with all different tributaries to do it and all different arteries, right? There's not just one.

[1:17:45] Michael Minarik: So when John Carafa came and one of our students, he's like, You're gonna be great. You know, Nancy Braun, who's amazing is really busy. Maybe sometimes I can get you to come on set with me at Gilded Age. Now she might be a choreographer for TV shows. And I just think that the world, what I've learned is that the more that you can realize that there's so many different streams of income available to you, the better off you'll be instead of oh, if I can just get to Broadway. You might be on a show that lasts for a week. What if you're Andrew Call, one of my good friends who was in Glory Day? We call it Glory Days because it's on Broadway for a day, right? This is a very different world. So let's be more like universal and eclectic about what you're looking at as a business.

Don't just be like, oh my god, I love Wicked. I love Wicked too. But what's the business? Do you want to be an S-corp? And what does that mean tax-wise? Like, are you an employee in your own S-corp? And I just think that I could say it, you know, most, if not all of these schools are not teaching this, man, and it really angers me. And the problem is that probably they might want to teach it, but again, they got to go through the 19 steps of red tape to get a whole new class. And they gotta hire somebody new. And then do they take the class? And like, and what does that even mean? But when I'm on a whiteboard saying this is what compound interest is, and the kids are like, wait, explain to me what our IRA is again.

I'm like, that's a bucket. And then their parents call me and say, Why are my kids screaming about an IRA? I was like, why don't they have an IRA? Yeah, like that. Every actor should have an IRA or some sort of annuity at 18 years old at the outset of their career.

[1:19:07] Michael Minarik: Well, you mentioned the school, the philosophy of trip, but like the this idea, and I think it's not the first time, certainly I've heard artists speak about the idea of like entitlement, I think is a broader word that we're using to younger people that are coming out of school. Do you feel like when you say, hey, that's we've we've successfully or at least done the what you can to staunch the sort of entitlement there?

[1:19:28] Michael Minarik: Is that mostly about the intake about who you the students you set in? Is there something that you feel like you're doing in classes? How are you graduating students that don't feel like casting directors are not saying, ooh, they're not stuck with this pandemic that seems like it's raging for a lot of young people? We're getting into some real crap here, and I love it. So basically, like I teach a lot of philosophy in my classes, and we take from different, again, stoic philosophers from different, you know, leaders of different, um, I could say like religions, but I don't really talk about religion at all, right? It's just like the Buddha or whatever the heck it is. And we find neurolinguistics that are positive.

If you keep saying the word that I deserve this, why? Why do you deserve it? Like, do you also deserve the bad things that happen to you? And if you believe that, then that's fine. But I was like, I went through life like thinking, I don't deserve anything, and I'm not entitled to anything. So the but you know, the Buddhists have this thing of the four noble truths, and life is suffering, life is suffering because of expectation. Once you lose expectation, you find enlightenment. And so if I don't expect anything to happen, then these blessings then are put upon my head. I can define them in my own reality. And I also teach the kids that their perspective is their reality. Yeah, every day you choose love or fear on everything that you do.

I could have been too scared to do this podcast, right? Or I love myself enough to hang out with Charlie MVP. Like, I don't, I think you need to, you know, ask if Elizabeth can call you that on your birthday every year. Um, like, I don't know. But when they leave, you know, look, some of them might revert to it, you know. But I talk to every person I come, like, how are my kids doing on your tour? They're like, they're the best kids. They're the nicest kids. And I do think it's the philosophy of community here that we do not foster competition because they're not competing with you. You're like, it's basically like you're playing golf. I'm competing with the course. I'm not competing with this person.

But I do believe so much in semantics. I don't have to take class today. I get to take class today. Just changing that word. I get to sing today. I get to do this today. So they change, sorry, they change their mental acuity perspectively on blessings instead of like, ooh, this sucks for me, or I deserve, or also again, we just don't use those words. I don't also have the word I'm sorry. It's so odd this generation. If you walk down the hallway, like, hi, like, oh, sorry. I'm like, what are you? Why are you apologizing for being? So we kind of negate. Look, if you hit somebody, A, you're gonna be accused of battery, and then you should say, I'm sorry. But I also have two exercises I do with the kids as well.

I call I want to eat the tomato, which I want them when they come into school to do, the do the thing that you're doing while you're doing it. The world is teaching you how to be distracted, and they're doing it by fear that you're not good enough and you're not tall enough, you're not talented. I want you to eat the blueberry when you put the blueberry. Don't look at the next blueberries, you're shoving it in your mouth. Just eat the damn blueberry and be here, right? And the next thing is I do is I tell them to do things outside of their comfort zone. Like if you always brush your teeth with your right hand do with your left hand, because then you're gonna specifically engage in that moment, not worry about distraction and fear and the adjudication of other people.

And doing breath work, we do things like I want you to put all the definitions and adjudications you have of yourself and the people into a backpack and let it slide off your body and breathe it and let that feeling of weightlessness come over you and to just be. You don't have to be pretty or be talented or be smart or be Michael Moneric. What does it feel like to just be your breath? And you see kids start to let, I'm gonna cry, start to let go. And what I love is that a lot of them after two years, like Mr. Narc, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm like, great. They're like, I truly found that I was doing this for other reasons. And I think I just want to be me and whatever that entails without any condition or adjective on that.

And so, Charlie, when they leave here, a lot of them, you know, I've had parents shake my hands crying, like, my kids smiling again. Like, what are you doing here? I'm like, I'm just helping the kids to be, and that's really it.

[1:23:10] Charlie Murphy: Beautifully said. Um, all right, well, then Rob with my actual last question, which is we always end with a little bit of advice for the parents, and here you are talking to the parents already. Um, your cult-like school that's making them all. Oh, that sounds horrible. Walk out of, oh, they came in one person and now they're just beaming smiles. No, but what advice would you give to parents? You know, I knew we sort of talked a little bit already about kind of cost and why your school is opposed to other schools, but maybe just from a broader perspective about parents kind of approaching this process of I have I have a young person who wants to be an artist and wants to go into this professionally, and you know, maybe some parents, of course, come in, they go, I know I'm I want I support my child, I know everything.

But maybe for the parents out there who are a little bit less um sold on the idea or just or don't know anything about it, it's a brand new world to them. What kind of advice do you give parents in that situation?

[1:23:56] Michael Minarik: Yeah, I would look internally and say, okay, I always ask the parents, I'm like, what do you do? And they're like, well, I'm a mortgage banker. I'm like, that's great. I was like, if your kid wanted to become a mortgage broker or banker in your town, do you think they have an easier job because they know you or a harder job because they know? They're like, well, easy, I could get them a job in a second. I was like, that's right. Yeah. I'm not saying that I can get you a job, but I'm saying that in a capitalistic economy, your network is your net worth. Uh-huh. And who you know, I think is vastly and exponentially more important. I've known some of the most, you know, perfectly fine, talented people that have done seven Broadway shows, and some of my most talented friends have never booked a Broadway show in their life.

If we live in a subjective art form, then the people choosing those people are the ones you want to meet. I don't care if you think you're the most talented person in the world and you win the last X factor. Okay, now what? Like I just want parents to think, okay, I work in the school system. I can get my kid a substitute teaching job. Right. Because you know the principal. Like, right now, Charlie, we did this because I knew Leo, you knew Kate, we all knew each other, right? Like, this is how the world works. And if you don't believe that it does, then I actually fervently disagree with you. I'm a moderately talented human being. I got very lucky. I think I'm blessed. I worked my tail off and I got my shows.

But there are other guys that are just as good as me as being Grantaire. But guess what? Four of my friends were backstage of lay Miz when it was happening, and they're like, You should hire a Moneric. Right? Like, in your and I the producers of Matilda were the same producers of Urentown that I did 20 years before. They hired me because they're like, oh, he was a really hard worker when he got on your in town. This is how the world works, unless you're in some massive caste system. So what I say to parents is, what are you buying? Look at what your return on your investment is, what is your qualitative research on it, and look at your own job. One more time. Are you an architect? Yes. Does your kid want to be an architect?

Yes. After they get out of their training, can you help get them a job because they know all of your architect friends? Probably better than anybody coming out of architecture school. It just makes to me linear sense. And that's why we built the school.

[1:26:03] Charlie Murphy: So well said. Alright, now if people want to check out more information, you already pointed them to the Instagram. What are the best ways that people should be checking out stuff for IAMT?

[1:26:11] Michael Minarik: Yeah, the Instagram's great. You know, we're actually building a new website right now, imt-nyc.com. We also have a TikTok page, IMT-NYC. You can go there too. Those are probably the best way to do tours all the time. So you can call in and get a tour if you're in New York City to see our space. Sit down with me or Sam and like, you know, if you want to do that. We don't really audit classes. We also have a summer program from kids from 12 to 19, which you don't even talk about. Um those kids, 12 to 19, they can come and then we stay at the CCNY dorms. Um I think it's about $3,000 for four weeks, which I think is really inexpensive. We have other programs, and you get to meet casting directors and talent agents.

Derek Hunt is gonna be there this summer. We also do like weekend intensives. We're gonna start doing a lot more as well. And in the future, I haven't told this yet, but we're looking to expand possibly around the country. So we have we have options now to build these as after school programs around the country that we're gonna start looking into in the next year or so.

[1:27:00] Charlie Murphy: Very, very cool. Well, Michael, this was such a pleasure. I'm so glad we got to do this. Uh, thanks so much for the time.

[1:27:05] Michael Minarik: Thanks, Charlie.

[1:27:11] Charlie Murphy: Yes, yes, yes. Just listening to back to that. I am enthused with Michael's positive energy. And do you believe that I'm gonna run right through that Broadway show league mansion? I will do it. I believe in myself, I can do it. Um, I do think there's an interesting takeaway surrounding that idea of credentialing. Um, though I do think I also said much of it in the interview, so I'll keep this one quick. You know, it is really true though. I think a lot of our well-meaning MTCA parents, they look at a degree in theater the way that you might look at an Ivy League degree if you want to have an elite job in academia, and that's just really not how this industry works. Certainly, I do think you have a statistical leg up if you went to one of the most competitive training programs.

But a great deal of that is about selection bias on the way in. And certainly that doesn't carry forward into your career as it goes, right? Once your foot is in the door, it's all about who you are in that room, not about what school is on your resume. And I think that can seem surprising since a lot of industries really do work differently. And it's also confusing because, of course, some aspects of this industry, you are helped by certain degrees. For instance, I would not be shy about it. It's much easier for me to teach acting, having gone to a well-known conservatory than if I didn't. But for Broadway, for TV and film, it is what I like to call a subjective meritocracy with some nepotism thrown in there.

They're looking for the best person for the job in their eyes, whatever that means, assuming it's not someone that they already know. And so, to Michael's point, I do think he makes it pretty well himself here. It's probably not a good idea to pay purely for the credentialism you might get. That, you know, the way you might do that if you're getting an MBA from CERN, whatever, that's NYU's business school, right? You're getting training from a school, you're getting connections from a school, but it's really not about what's stamped on that paper in terms of a credential of you're a good actor, you're a bad actor, those kind of things. Now, of course, I likely don't need to say all the parts about all the other things you might not be getting at a non-university, but of course, I think that is worth thinking about in terms of what fit is right for you.

You know, there's the idea of like going to a city campus, that's one thing compared to a sprawling football school kind of campus. But it's also a whole other level if you're like living in an apartment in New York City and fending your way through upper Manhattan with all the regular folk. You might get to run into me and my baby up here in Harlem, uh, if you choose to. But it it's just that very different experience. There's like not having a quad or having a very small quad, and then there's like, I'm literally just like living with normal people in an apartment building. That can be a little different than what people expected. As a side note kind of takeaway, I know it's many years away from for a lot of you, but I do really like what Michael is saying in terms of sort of the economics for young actors.

Truly, not enough actors understand some of the very basic math stuff that can save them and make them lots of money. You do not need to be a math whiz. I don't even think you need to like absolutely crush your personalized itemized deductions or get everything exactly right. But some of that basic stuff, like Michael mentioned, contributing to a 401k when you're making really good money, if you don't do that, you're just leaving money on the table in like truly three different ways, like three very important ways you're leaving money on the table. And for an industry where very often we are not guaranteed economic security from our jobs, you know, with some examples like we had someone on the podcast who had a 20-year Broadway run.

Okay, a little bit of economic security in that case. But most people, that's not the reality of their career that they're kind of given that that guaranteed automatic security, it then is all the more important that young actors become financially numerate. That doesn't necessarily have to be from a class. It could be about reading a few simple books. You can find a lot of this stuff online. But I do really highly recommend you make that a goal for yourself as an actor of going, how can I understand just the basics of some of this financial stuff? For instance, you know, uh what are you talking about with being a corporation? There are, I think, a lot of different intricate potential tax advantages which an accountant could talk you through.

But like one very basic and obvious one that I think most actors can understand is that you're gonna have variable income in your career. So just from like a basic understanding of how our tax brackets work in this country, if you did that tour that Michael mentioned and you make $200,000 one year, but the surrounding year you make $20,000, right? If you file normally, you're gonna pay no taxes in the two years you made $20,000, but you're gonna pay huge taxes in the year that you made all your money. But if you're a corporation and you can even that out, you're gonna end up paying three years of about $80,000. That is truly tens of thousands of dollars of tax savings, right? It's just money that you're giving away to the government that you could choose not to give away.

And that doesn't take a lot of genius to understand, but anytime you're talking about saving tens of thousands of dollars, I do think it's worth putting the effort to go, I can get this, because everyone listening to this podcast can understand that. And some of those more basic kind of financial numeracy terms. Um, and of course, I put that takeaway about an hour and 15 minutes into a long podcast where the fewest possible listeners will hear it. I guess in some ways it does benefit me if you all pay more taxes in the same way that some people feel like personally robbed by other people getting their student loans forgiven. But I'm gonna choose to keep spreading love and kindness on this podcast in the hope that it comes back around.

And that love and kindness will continue to be produced by Meghan Cordier and Kelly Prennergrass. You can check out more of it by subscribing to your podcast feed. It's the same place that you all just left us a rating review and following us at Mapping the College Audition on Instagram. You can also check us out at mdca.com for more information on our coaching services and to sign up for our junior workshop next Wednesday. Two my young artists out there mapping their journeys. Do you all think I look like a big math person? You may have to come to this workshop to find out. We'll see you next week.