Broadway Swings: Covering the Ensemble in Musical Theatre

Or in Chicago, we had so many people off one day that we did “Cell Block Tango” with one empty chair! Flying on adrenaline makes you feel so awesome!

In some lucky cases, Musical Directors are giving Swings the incredible gift of a CD or MP3 files with all the vocal parts recorded separately for each song in the show. For any of you Musical Directors out there, reading this book, we really love this and would be so grateful to always get to have this! We are hoping that with the ever-advancing t

Once I became comfortable in a few tracks to the point where I didn’t have to focus or think as much about where I was going, I began to track while onstage.

One night, in Phantom, I had to cover two roles in the show at the same time. One role was the confidant with a painted white face and bright pink cheeks, etc. The other role was a Christine Daaé double in the white negligee gown. I had no time to paint my full face to perform the confidant while doing the double track so I just painted half of my

“Scene Partner” app There is an app that can help Swings to learn their lines more efficiently, called Scene Partner. Scene Partner is a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that helps Actors learn their lines. It uses text-to-speech technology, to turn the text of your play into speech, so that you can listen to just your lines, just your c

“Mer-Blades.”

14. Learn How to Make Mistakes

when tracking backstage] I take along a tape recorder, and write down the notes later.

When I teach at George Brown College in Toronto, I make all of my students practice swinging. I choreograph three pieces over the semester, where they are only in two. They must then create a Swing book for the piece they have not been choreographed in, and at the exam, I “swing” them into the piece to see how they do. It’s a skill that you end up