Michigan Muse Fall 2026 > The Senior Showcase: A Performance Like No Other

The Senior Showcase: A Performance Like No Other

By Judy Galens

After four years of college – of studying, bonding with friends, rehearsing, and performing – seniors getting degrees in dance, musical theatre, and acting have one last milestone to achieve: a performance that serves as a last hurrah for their tight-knit cohort, and one that could have a significant impact on their professional lives.

Their time at SMTD culminates with senior showcases, staged in the nation’s premier performing arts markets, for audiences of talent agents, managers, producers, and casting directors. The seniors prepare carefully and thoughtfully, recognizing that the showcases serve as an opportunity to introduce themselves to industry professionals who just might help launch their careers. For some graduating seniors, their showcase performances lead directly to signing with a representative and subsequently to auditions; for others, the path is less direct. Regardless, the showcases yield benefits that last far beyond the event itself.

Dance Seniors Take New York

In the months leading up to the showcase, each senior in the Department of Dance prepares a solo piece and participates in ensemble dances. Dance students largely self-direct their work on the showcase; faculty support them, but the students decide what ensemble dances they’d like to create or restage (and with whom), and what kind of solo they want to perform. They choreograph the works, and they design the costumes, sound, and lighting. With input from faculty, they even create the guest list for the showcase. As noted by Jillian Hopper, assistant professor and interim chair of the department, “The negotiation between them as a whole cohort has to be, how can we serve everyone within the cohort and highlight individual skills within an ensemble experience?’”

While the responsibility of devising the showcase during their final semester at SMTD can be daunting, the experience is beneficial in the end. “It was a little intimidating at times, because we didn’t even know where to start,” noted Mya Waple (BFA ’25), “but it was great. Definitely a crash course in team bonding, cooperation, and idea meshing.” Brooke Taylor (BFA ’23) shared a similar view, stating that the experience gave her a confidence boost: “When we were in the thick of it, we were all like, oh my gosh, there has to be an easier way. But looking back, that opportunity opened my eyes to further producing and creating my own work.”

The showcase is performed at Gibney Dance, which Hopper described as “one of the main dance hubs in New York City.” The audience for the showcase consists of talent agency representatives, alumni, and occasionally donors and parents of students. The evening concludes with a reception, where students can mingle with attendees.

As with every senior showcase, the dance department’s trip is not just about the performance. Dance students also tour New York Live Arts, where they meet with the artists in residence and learn about what the center has to offer, from studio space to funding for artists. At the Gibney, the morning of the showcase, they take a master class and have lunch with artists in residence. And the trip offers students an invaluable opportunity to get to know alumni who are eager to help them network and to share advice about working as professional dancers.

A Big Night in NYC for Musical Theatre Seniors

For seniors in the Department of Musical Theatre, preparation for the senior showcase is part of the curriculum – they take a class devoted to it during their final semester. With guidance from faculty and a select crew of alumni, each student chooses and rehearses a song to perform solo (or, in some cases, with another student).

Before heading to New York City for the showcase, the students record their performance in the Duderstadt Center Video Studio on North Campus, and the department sends the recordings to industry professionals all over the country. “That has allowed us to branch out more to places like Chicago, LA, and to other agencies that might not be based in New York, which has been a great benefit for the students,” noted Cynthia Kortman Westphal, Arthur and Martha Hearron Endowed Professor of Musical Theatre and chair of the department.

After kicking things off just after graduation with two showcase performances in Ann Arbor, the seniors and a few faculty members depart for New York for the main event. That performance is invitation-only, and SMTD’s musical theatre showcase – one of about two hundred such events in the city each spring – is one of the hottest tickets in town. Produced by alum Rachel Hoffman (BFA ’99), the showcase is a tightly choreographed evening, with each attendee receiving folders with students’ headshots and résumés and a form to fill out if they want to schedule a meeting with any of them. Many seniors close out the evening with multiple meetings set up with prospective agents and managers.

Kortman Westphal summed up the invaluable benefit of the showcase performance as a means of securing these meetings: “One of the biggest barriers for actors who move to New York City without a showcase is, there are so few opportunities to meet agents and managers. You can’t just email an agent and say, ‘Hey, can I get a meeting?’” And the meetings serve an important dual purpose – agents and managers get to know the student, and the student can find the representative who is the best fit for them.

Students are encouraged to spend several extra days in the city, taking meetings and auditioning. In addition, musical theatre faculty arrange for opportunities for the freshly graduated seniors to interact with and learn from alumni working in the field. In addition to sharing tips about working in the industry, one alum compiled a spreadsheet for recent graduates that offers recommendations for such necessities as finding a dentist, a dry cleaner, an inexpensive rehearsal studio, and the best pizza slices in town. Another alum with extensive experience on national tours shared crucial information about the many different types of touring contracts and the straight scoop about life on tour.

Theatre & Drama Seniors Explore LA, NYC, and Chicago

With the support of faculty, seniors in the Department of Theatre & Drama prepare a slate of scenes for their senior showcase. Each student performs twice, in scenes or monologues of their choosing. Before the scenes are performed live at the showcase venues, they are filmed for a digital showcase that gets distributed to over 10,000 industry professionals, and each student receives footage for their personal digital reel.

The acting showcases take place in three cities, with a slightly different focus in each. In both Los Angeles and New York City, the seniors perform the showcase twice in one day for industry professionals, followed by receptions. Their second day in each city is spent meeting as a group with a casting agency and with alumni working in the field, leaving time open for individual meetings that are scheduled post-performance. In New York, they cap off the trip by attending a play – often one featuring an alum or faculty member in the cast.

The Chicago leg of the trip goes a little differently, consisting primarily of meetings at prominent theatres in the city and with talent and casting agencies. “We’re there two full days,” explained Tiffany Trent, associate professor and chair of the department. “We do four visits each day, and it’s a lot. Chicago feels like a marathon.” Professor Dan Cantor, a veteran Chicago actor, arranges the visits through his contacts. Trent, who also has deep roots in the Chicago theatre scene, described it as an especially supportive community, where agents and casting directors feel that if “one person wins, everybody wins. It’s not about the competition. It’s about building the city.”

The beauty of visiting these three major cities: students can try each one on for size, getting an idea of which city feels right and best fits their career goals. Trent related that, in each of the cities they visit, some students instantly fall in love and want to start apartment shopping, while others can’t wait to leave. Her response to the unenchanted: “Good! Good! You didn’t waste two years out there, right?”

For Mya Waple, the showcase trip represented an unparalleled experience with her fellow seniors and an important lesson learned from the alumni she met: dance careers can take many forms, and no two career paths are alike. That lesson stayed with her as she moved to Los Angeles soon after graduating. She met another dancer there who told her about his job teaching at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. Intrigued, Waple applied for a teaching position at a studio near her apartment and was soon hired. “I’m totally head over heels into it,” she shared. “It’s so much fun.” In addition to teaching, she soon began competing and spent a week in London at an Arthur Murray event. She was amazed to have found a job where she could dance, make a steady income, and be immersed in a community of people passionate about the art form. “I could never in a million trillion years have told you that that was how it was gonna pan out,” she said. “It’s awesome.”

While preparing for his senior showcase this past spring, Nicholas A. Wilkinson (BFA ’26) went through more than half a dozen song options before hitting on the winner: “I’ll Be Satisfied,” by Jackie Wilson. How did it work out for Wilkinson? “It went well,” he (under)stated. He received 20-plus responses from agents and managers, ultimately signing with a theatrical agent, a manager, and a commercial agent (for voiceover and commercial work). Two days after the showcase, he went to an open call for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new musical, Warriors; he auditioned all day and made it as far as the finals. Wilkinson was elated to have been in the same room with Miranda and other Broadway luminaries in his first week in New York. “It was actually insane – so much fun,” he said. He then spent the summer at the Muny in St. Louis, playing Seaweed J. Stubbs in Hairspray and performing in the ensemble of South Pacific. After spending some time at home with his family, Wilkinson headed back to New York in the fall to continue auditioning.

Victoria Vourkoutiotis (BFA ’24, theatre & drama) recognized the importance of a senior showcase while still in high school, and it was one of the reasons she chose Michigan. “I knew it was not a guarantee, but I really wanted to focus on a program that would have a showcase opportunity where I could potentially meet agents or managers.” That plan paid off – after her showcase performance, Vourkoutiotis signed with an agent and a manager, a team that she feels supports and believes in her. Within six months of her showcase, she booked her first Broadway show. She was cast as an understudy in John Proctor Is the Villain, and toward the end of its run, she stepped in as Raelynn for several weeks. A casting director happened to see one of those performances and then cast Vourkoutiotis in an indie film opposite Robin Tunney. While filming that movie, Vourkoutiotis auditioned for and was cast as a series regular in a new Prime Video series – Delphi, a spinoff of the Creed and Rocky franchise executive produced by Michael B. Jordan.

Vourkoutiotis is philosophical about her success so far. “I got really lucky,” she said. “I chalk all of it up to, right place, right time.” Sharing observations that apply across the board, she commented on the randomness of trying to enter the industry post-graduation. Some have what she called a “textbook best outcome,” while others get an agent right away but have trouble finding work, and still others don’t sign with representatives but manage to forge a successful acting career. And then there are those who emerge from the showcase experience realizing that an entirely different path would be more fulfilling for them. Whatever the outcome, the senior showcases are landmark moments for college artists as they embark on their professional lives.

Making Senior Showcases Possible

The benefits of senior showcases are substantial, and also – there’s no way around it – the costs associated with them are considerable. In addition to obtaining and printing headshots and sourcing a performance-ready outfit (or costumes, for the dance students), students need to buy plane tickets and pay for food and lodging. At the department level, costs include travel expenses for faculty, renting performance space, and, in the case of musical theatre, renting sound equipment and hiring musicians for the performance. Faculty members do what they can to minimize the costs, and often students save money by sharing a hotel room or staying with people they know. But for the students and the departments, the expenses are significant.

Enter a group of generous donors who recognize the value of the senior showcases in launching students’ careers and want to help. For the dance showcase, the Friends of Dance group – donors who give annually to support the department – devotes a substantial portion of funds to give each senior a travel stipend. For musical theatre, Friends of Musical Theatre allocates much of its fundraising to senior showcase costs. In addition, in recent years two benefactors have given gifts to minimize musical theatre showcase costs for students: Mike Mosallam (BFA ’01, musical theatre), a Tony Award-winning producer, director, and writer for theatre, film, and television, has provided a stipend to each senior in the department for the past two years; and Allan (BA ’60, JD ’63) and Joy Nachman (BA ’68) established the Allan and Joy Nachman Musical Theatre Senior Showcase Fund. For theatre & drama, much of the showcase expenses plus travel stipends for students are covered by the Regent Andrea Fischer Newman and Frank Newman Endowed Fund for Theatre Showcase.

The senior showcases serve as an essential introduction to industry professionals, but without support, the expense might prove prohibitive for some students. Thanks to the generosity of many SMTD donors, every senior has the opportunity to be “in the room where it happens” and to share their talents with the world.