Mann, Lader, Fisher Join FL Bway Theatre Project

More stars will join the previously announced Christopher D'Amboise, Lisa Jolley and Jed Bernstein as teachers at Broadway Theatre Project in Tampa, during the first week of the program.

Terrence Mann appears July 13.  Broadway credits include Cats, Les Miserables (Tony Award nomination), Beauty and the Beast (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), The Scarlet Pimpernel, Getting Away With Murder, A Christmas Carol, Rags, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, and Barnum.  Off-Broadway and regional credits include: Assassins (Playwrights Horizon), 1776 and Tonight at 8:30 (Williamson Theatre Festival), Barnum in Barnum (national tour). Film and television credits include: Chorus Line, Big Top Pee Wee, Critters, Solar Babies, "One Life To Live," "As The World Turns" (Emmy nomination), "Another World," "All My Children," "Law & Order," Philby, Shangri-la Plaza, True Women and Bump in the Night.  Regional directing credits include: 1776, The Sound of Music, Hello Dolly, Gypsy, Funny Girl, Show Boat, Camelot, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Dreamgirls and Pirates of Penzance.  Artistic Director of the North Carolina Theatre for ten years. Mann's musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet played at the Goodspeed Opera House and at the Ordway Theatre.

Joan Lader will teach July 14-15.  Joan Lader has worked as a speech pathologist and teacher in private practice in New York City for the past 28 years.  She has provided vocal therapy to singers and actors with injured voices as well as training elite Broadway, Opera, Pop and Rock singers. In addition, she has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, Pace University, The Voice Foundation in Philadelphia, The Pacific Voice Foundation in San Francisco,  NYSTA (New York Singing Teacher's Association), Berklee College of Music, as well as giving numerous Master Classes and workshops at Yale (Calhoun College), BTP (Broadway Theater Project), and "The Lost Colony " in North Carolina. Lader is a certified master teacher of the Estill Voice Training System (EVTS) and has extensive training in The Alexander Technique as well as Fitzmaurice VoiceWork and the work of Arthur Lessac. Her teaching and therapy draw from all of these disciplines in order to individualize and address the specific needs of her widely varying patient population.

Rob Fisher will take part in the project July 14-15.  Fisher was music director and conductor of the Tony Award-winning Encores! series at New York's City Center from its inception in 1994 through 2005.  This series has led to many recordings for which he has served as the conductor and associate producer.  The Broadway hits Chicago, Wonderful Town, and the more recent The Apple Tree began at the Encores! series, and Fisher was instrumental in their successful transfer to Broadway; he remains supervising music director of companies of Chicago around the world.  He conducted the Grammy Award-winning Chicago cast recording and the recently released Wonderful Town recording.  For four seasons, Fisher was music director for Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company. He continues to be a frequent guest on "A Prairie Home Companion."  In 2000, he was the music director for the New York premiere of Sondheim's Saturday Night.  In 2001 he conducted Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with Patti LuPone, George Hearn, and the San Francisco Symphony, broadcast on PBS and available on DVD.  This spring, he made his critically acclaimed New York Philharmonic debut conducting My Fair Lady, and he has led many major U.S. orchestras. 

"Founded in 1991, Broadway Theatre Project (BTP) is the world's most prestigious musical theatre arts education program for high school and college students. Under the Artistic Direction of Debra McWaters, the non-profit BTP is an intensive three-week training program focused on the key disciplines of musical theatre including acting, dancing, and singing, as well as the critical life skills necessary to work in the professional world of entertainment," state press notes.

Contact Samantha Taylor at (212) 979 6092 or e-mail sam@staylorassoc.com for more information.

Photo of Terrence Mann by Linda Lenzi