I went to a performing arts school, and we studied musical theater, jazz vocal performance, and they kind of start you out on those things because they feel like it is a good foundation, and it was.
I went to performing arts high school, and I took dance and acting every day. Then, I went to Marymount Manhattan College and I have a B.A. in acting, with a concentration in theater performance and a minor in musical theater. I studied there for three years.
I danced for a while, and I knew I could sing, so I just began singing in a praise band at church and doing musical theater and jazz vocal performance in school. One didn't really lead to another; I was just always interested in the performance arts.
I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.
I knew that I could sing when I was young. I would listen to a lot of jazz; I'm a big jazz fan. When I first got to high school and studied musical theater, I could sing. But I added certain things to my voice, and I realized after graduating high school that this is the kind of voice I had. It's not very nimble, but it's heavy.
Work hard and follow your dreams. I work nine and a half hours a day, five days a week; it's a lot of hard work and sacrifices, but in the end, it all comes out to be worth it. If you want to get a head-start into the entertainment business, get into a performing arts school or start performing in a theater because that's one of the main places that agents and managers look for talent.
I went to the High School for Performing Arts in New York for acting. I've studied it on and off for years and have done some theater and film.
Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.
I grew up with gay family members, and I went to a performing arts high school. So I grew up in children's theater, musical theater, and all of my life has been around the LGBT community.
I guess if you have had a good education as opposed to someone who hasn't been to school, you start off on this journey having studied Shakespeare for years and years or studied classics. I suppose why people see this big divide - the boarding school boys getting all the roles - is because they feel like some people have had a head start.
I have a degree in vocal performance, I'm a classically trained singer, and I studied musical theatre.
I went to a performing arts school. I went to an audition for a musical, 'Les Miserables,' in the West End, and I got in, and my parents were like, 'Oh, you can sing?' So I kind of started singing properly when I was, like, seven.
I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
I studied music; I studied theater. I went to school for it, so I kind of treat it in that manner, that whether or not I can hang out, I've always been the one to go in my room and chill.
It helps so much being on location. It's like the difference between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and then the camera finds things within that. There's a huge difference in that, because what it takes away is performance. You don't feel like performing. You're just kind of doing it. You're existing.
I love the theater. I love the rehearsals. That's where you build a performance. That's your foundation. If you're gonna build a house, you start with the foundation. That makes the house strong. That's the way I build a character, from the foundation out.
People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.