New Line Theatre Artistic Director Scott Miller Releases 'The ABC's of Acting In Musicals'

New Line Theatre artistic director Scott Miller continues his popular ABCs of Broadway Musicals series, with a second volume. In 2020, Miller released The ABCs of Broadway Musicals: A Civilian's Guide. The response was so encouraging that Miller has now released The ABCs of Acting in Musicals.

Only 80 pages long, it's short enough to read in one sitting, or you can flip open to any page and find something worth thinking about. It's a fun, easy-to-read, totally non-intimidating way to get a solid basic understanding of the very difficult craft of creating a great performance in a stage musical.

The book includes a brief history of musicals, a brief survey of acting methods, myths about musicals and about acting, useful musical theatre terms, good books and documentaries, and a wide array of other related topics, like using silence and stillness, the Fourth Wall, realism and naturalism, playing funny, playing sexy, acting traps, audition tips, the nature of "reality" onstage, and lots more. Even trained, experienced musical theatre actors may learn something from this little book!

Miller says, "As I fast approach the far edge of middle age, I realize there's this ocean of knowledge and understanding of musicals that I've absorbed over the course of my very artsy life, through the 120+ musicals I've directed, the many brilliant artists I've gotten to talk to, and correspond with, and work with, the thousands of cast albums I've listened to and loved (and sung along with), the hundreds of scores I've played and scripts I've read and productions (and video bootlegs) I've seen. And all those biographies and behind-the-scenes books on top of that. I feel like I ought to share as much of that as I can, not just with the people creating great musical theatre now and in the future, but also with all the people who just love musicals as much as I do."

Miller is already working on the next two books in the series, The ABCs of Directing Musicals, and The ABCs of Writing Musicals.


Scott Miller is a musical theatre composer, lyricist, bookwriter, historian, consultant, scholar, fanboy, and the founder and artistic director of New Line Theatre, an alternative musical theatre company in St. Louis, founded in 1991. He holds a degree in music and musical theatre from Harvard University, and he has directed more than 120 musicals. He's written twelve musicals, two plays, and more than a dozen books about musical theatre, and he also writes the Bad Boy of Musical Theatre blog. For fifteen years, he co-hosted the radio show Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond on KDHX radio, and now he hosts the periodic podcast Stage Grok, available on iTunes. He lives in South St. Louis with his cats Hamilton and Macheath.

To post a comment, you must register and login.