A Glee Club for NUS

The National University of Singapore.

With less than two months to go until I begin my collegiate journey in NUS, I've been thinking of what I want to create from my university experience. What will make the next four years worth it? What do I want to accomplish as I write this next chapter? How should I define my university journey so that my future self can live with no regrets? I looked into my current interests. It's not even a secret anymore - I adore theatre. Very specifically, I live for Broadway-style musical theatre, something that does not currently exist as a full extracurricular activity in NUS. I examined my options. I could just settle for being a member at one of the many drama clubs. I could just live with taking GEH1040 (the music conservatory's musical theatre workshop) and call it a day. I could sneak my way into Raffles Hall's annual Musical Production and try to tie all of my performing arts experiences together.

Or I could start my own something. Something crazy. Something that no one has ever tried before.

Maybe NUS needs its own musical theatre society. A place where acting and singing converges into a single art form. It sounds like a really cool plan, and I got down to work.

The flurry of new ideas filed away in my Google Drive gradually came together as a proposal took shape bit by bit. As an incoming theatre major and with some actor training under my belt, I'm fairly confident about teaching a thing or two about acting in an informal collegiate club setting. However, with little experience in music or technical voice knowledge, I was in need of someone who could join me in my little crusade. Finding a musically-inclined person who was willing to work on a no-pay startup before they have even commenced their university journey was a tall order. I needed someone who understands the nature of musical theatre - even better if they have a fierce passion for the performing arts. Fortunately, I knew just the person for the job.

With the concept down and the first of the executive committee onboard, we were ready to start building and creating our club. We navigated the possibilities and the limitations: What were we ready to market ourselves as? What can we offer to the college as a whole? I decided early into our brainstorming process that we would focus mainly on acting and singing in order to make the club more accessible to the student community. While dance is a core component of musical theatre, I was more interested in developing actor-singers who can appreciate the nuance that goes into devising specificity in song and text. Our curriculum hence integrates music theory and voice lessons with actor training, with a strong focus on studying the narrative value of musical theatre songs and experimenting with choices and directions.

From there, we also considered the possibility of live performances and the formats to which they might take place. We understood that our club may not be popular enough for ensemble activities or full-scale performances, and we may not even possess the budget to stage any musicals. Consequently, we had to create a different model for our student showcase. Where is the "theatre" in our musical theatre club if we aren't staging a production? Our solution was to market the idea of musical theatre as storytelling through acting and singing. Instead of presenting musical theatre as a visual spectacle, we introduce it in its purest form - the actor and their singing voice. By removing the fixation on tangible results, we may then focus on developing actual vocal skill and acting acumen in our members so that we achieve what we set out to do: Grooming performers who are actual forces to be reckoned with.

This is an ambitious project to be sure, and we are well aware that even if it does get approved, we may not necessarily obtain any funding - we may be able to rent a small performing arts studio on the house, but we would likely have to create our own lesson materials and mentor our peers on our own. Nevertheless, my hope is that we can create a coherent experience that does justice to an art form that has captivated my imagination and rewritten my future.

We live in a time where ideas are allowed to grow into something new, and that makes an already worthy pursuit a realistic venture that I am ready to try for. I'm genuinely excited to see how this passion project might turn out, and I'm hopeful that musical theatre would eventually be recognized and respected as a mainstream art form in Singapore.