The world of musical theater moves faster than the tap shoes donned by Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man”—and your résumé needs to be as current as today’s Broadway marquees. Let’s break down exactly what needs to be on your musical theater résumé so you can land your next big role on Broadway and beyond.
Like the acting résumé and dance résumé, the musical theater résumé is a document highlighting your training, education, skills, and experience. It should include:
Personal information:
- Full (stage) name
- Voice type (vocal range)
- Phone number
- Email address
- Website (and social media handles, if applicable)
Your header is the chance to exhibit some of your own personal branding. Just make sure to avoid anything overly ostentatious, like a font that compromises legibility.
Agent or manager’s contact information and logo: If you have an agent or manager that represents you for musical theater work, congrats! Add their contact information to your résumé.
How to Break Into Musical TheaterCredits: Rather than forcing all of your credits into the standard categories, try thinking the other way around: Look at your body of work, write it all down, then break it into categories. Standard categories often include theater and/or musical theater, TV, and film. But if you don’t have much film experience, or don’t consider yourself a film actor, you’re under no pressure to include this category if you specialize elsewhere. Other potential categories might include Shakespeare, opera or operetta, commercial work, modeling, choral experience, etc., depending on what represents your body of work best.
Once you’ve decided what categories you want to break your work into, put those in bold on the page. Extra formatting is up to you, but these category titles should stand out from the credits themselves.
Keep to five to seven or so credits per category. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but after a while, important items you want the casting team or director to see will get lost under too much information. Select the credits that speak for you best.
For each acting credit you have, list them in the following order, from left to right:
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TITLE OF SHOW Role name Theater name (Dir. name)
Put the show title in capital letters in the first column. Then, add the role you played. If you played an unnamed character with solo lines, you can write “Ft. Ensemble,” for featured ensemble. This is where you can also indicate if you were Dance Captain (DC). In the third and last column, list the theater name and then the director’s name in parentheses, with the abbreviation “Dir.” preceding it. When separating your columns, don’t use spaces. Tabs ensure that each item lines up vertically. The cleaner this looks, the easier your résumé is to read.
Training and education: List any college degrees you hold. Then, list your training in order of discipline—most commonly, that will include your singing, acting, and dancing training—from what you’re most expert in to what you’re less expert in. List how many years you’ve studied, with whom you’ve studied (and whether you currently study with them), or the school at which you study. You can also list any other relevant training you might have in other areas including, but not limited to, puppeteering, voiceover, and improv.
Personal stats: Include your height, weight, eye color, and hair color so casting directors have an idea of your appearance.
Miscellaneous: Finally, you get a free couple of lines to share with the casting team your union status, special skills (this is a good spot to list any tumbling ability, instrument proficiency, sight-reading ability, recording studio experience, or any accents you have in your back pocket!), passport status, and any awards and nominations.
Theater still favors a quick one-page summary of your skills and experience. This is a hard rule: All that information needs to fit, comfortably, on a single page. Follow this musical theater résumé example for your own one-sheet:
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and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Backstage or its staff.
