Graduate Musical Theatre Writing

Year One

Collaborate. Critique. Find your voice.

Lab

At the heart of the Program are our writing labs, where each week you and your collaborators present what you’ve written and collect responses from your faculty and peers. The labs focus on craft; collaboration and communication between artists of different disciplines; storytelling in music, lyrics and book; and the creation of work that is engaging, meaningful and relevant. They are where you learn how to give and take constructive critique, incorporating feedback that is useful to you individually or to your collaborative team as you revise your work for presentation the following week.

Typical exercises include explorations of song form, formalism, ensemble writing and prose-setting, and connect you with students and faculty from other departments at Tisch, including Dance, Photography and Imaging, and Design for Stage & Film.

 

Seminars

Seminars are content classes for the entire cohort which set up the lab exercises as well as cover subjects like music theatre history, musical film, worldbuilding, and working in nontraditional forms like games, immersive, and devised work.

Tutorials

Tutorials are classes that spotlight your particular discipline (book, lyrics or music). Since you are all storytellers, both music and words people attend a Playwriting Tutorial in dramatic fundamentals.

Master Classes

Throughout the year master classes are offered by established directors, choreographers, composers, lyricists, bookwriters, producers and designers.

 

 

Year One Electives & Additional Opportunities

  • Writing from Yourself

    A chance to experiment with new ways of writing from yourself. Explore your relationship to your world, and discover where your own life might dance and sing.

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  • Absurdism

    A class examining the essential place of absurdity in the musical theater writer’s toolkit, for the purpose of exploring serious and important issues through a different lens, or for the sheer pleasure of wackiness.

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  • Double Event (Puppets Collaboration)

    A collaboration with Tisch Design for Stage & Film to create original puppet musicals. This multi-week project explores new collaborative models between writers and designers and culminates in an informal sharing at NYU’s African Grove Theatre.

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  • Choreographers, Composers, & Designers

    Students dancing

    A collaboration with Tisch Dance, and Design for Stage & Film where GMTWP students create music for dance pieces that are fully-staged with costumes and sets.

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  • Composer/Lyricist Tutorial

    Student writing

    An opportunity for those of you who write both words and music. A series of master classes by faculty composer-lyricists and guest artists exploring various approaches when you create both together.

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  • AOP-NYU/Tisch Opera Lab

    Students Singing

    A collaboration between Brooklyn contemporary opera producer American Opera Projects, GMTW, and Tisch Design for Stage & Film focusing on the history and creation of new operas. Site specific projects in New York have included original operas inspired by — and performed at — Fort Greene Park, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hudson Guild, Woodlawn Cemetery and the New York Transit Museum. (Photo by Lisa Aurigemma)

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  • Introduction to Musical Pilots

    A class for musical theatre writers in the basics of writing for episodic television, starting with cold openings and culminating in the sketch of a musical pilot teleplay.

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  • Second Drafts Concert

    A chance to have the second draft of your GMTW lab exercises performed in a cabaret-style concert by students from Tisch Drama.

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  • Immersive Halloween Event

    An immersive, interactive event which unfolds in our classrooms and hallways every year, conceived, built and presented by students. Equal parts haunted house, escape room, art installation, adventure game and musical, this is a fun, hands-on opportunity for those interested in exploring spatial and experiential storytelling.

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  • New York City Center Choreography Fellow Collaboration

    An opportunity to collaborate with New York City Center’s Ann Reinking Choreography Fellow to create the music and words for an original dance piece to be included in their final showcase at City Center.

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