Broadway Swings: Covering the Ensemble in Musical Theatre

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

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!

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.

ERIC WOODALL (Casting Director, Tara Rubin Casting)

physically exit and re-enter a room to help “change hats.”

the most important part of casting Swings is finding those with the “Swing Brain.” This factor can be difficult to teach and is basically a combination of organizational skills, a “level head,” spatial awareness, and a “go-with-the-flow” attitude.

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

“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

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