Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Adam Kantor
Aspiring musical theater stars have an unusual opportunity coming up at the Walton Arts Center: Broadway performer Adam Kantor is offering a Virtual Broadway Master Class that will include direct feedback from the musical theater star. The Walton Arts Center website says the class will also “help participants develop individual audition techniques including perfecting a monologue, acting through the song, finding yourself in the material, best practices and how to tackle choreography.”
Kantor is a Grammy- and Emmy Award-winning performer who is the recipient of an Outer Critics Circle award for his performance in the role of Harry in “Darling Grenadine” at the Roundabout. He has been teaching for over a decade.
“Once I was on Broadway, because of that Broadway credit, I was approached by places like Broadway Artists Alliance, who often partner with Broadway actors to coach young students,” he says. “To me, [teaching] feels like one of the most personal, often therapeutic, soul-excavating exercises one can do, and it feels like a privilege to be part of it. It’s a gift. It feels like a two-way equation — performance is something that is unearthed by the artist, and often in collaboration with others, like a director, like a coach, colleagues, etc., and I just love being part of that process.”
Kantor answered three questions for What’s Up! in advance of his virtual class.
Q. You have an impressive performance resume. What was the impetus behind teaching?
A. I’ve always had the urge to just jump in and work with people. In college, for example, being in musical theater class, working on acting the song and so wanting to get up there and collaborate with the student who would be working their song, and just get in and ask all the questions and go deep. I think I knew how influential my teachers were on me and how much I gleaned from them and how much I respected them, and just how important they always were to me in my process, so I think I always had the urge to be part of someone else’s process in that way.
Q. Can you talk a little about the differences between teaching in person versus virtually?
A. I was not accustomed to teaching virtually. I didn’t start virtual teaching until just this past year. I’ve loved it. It’s enabled me to access students I would never access previously; I’ve been teaching all over the country through my Zoom box. I’ve loved being able to be a part of communities that in some cases I didn’t even know existed and are vibrant, and flourishing and inspiring. The differences between teaching in person versus virtually — the core work is still the same. It’s all about excavating the lyric and asking the essential questions in an effort to connect deeper with material and to offer the most authentic organic performance that one can offer. What’s great about it is that it opens doors to access. A lot of schools and universities with whom I’ve been teaching have opened an auditing option so that folks from anywhere can tune in and watch and be part of the experience somehow.
Q. Did you have mentors, teachers, in your life that inspired your choice of career? Do you carry lessons from those past inspirations into your own teaching career?
A. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Big yes. My mentors, my teachers, were so important to me. Starting from my local teachers in Great Neck Long Island. When I was 12 or 13, the music teacher in my middle school would give me voice lessons for free because he just saw something in me. And all throughout high school, drama teachers, English teachers [offered] really, really deep fostering.
And then my first sort of real foray into the professional musical theater landscape. Alix Korey taught a summer of “Acting the Song” that I took at NYU Tisch when I was in high school. She had a lot of Broadway credits.
I was enamored with her and her experience and the way that she taught. She is a brilliant teacher, knows how to extract really direct, clear, exciting performances. She was deeply influential on me, and I carried the sort of structure and foundations of what she taught through to a lot of how I approached, especially, auditioning.
Thirteen years later, I was cast in “Fiddler on the Roof” on Broadway, and she was playing Yenta. So I got to act alongside my teacher mentor on Broadway, which was really, really meaningful to me, and I think to her as well.