Crossover Corner: Musical Theatre Rep with Purpose!

Find out how to harness fresh, fall energy to assign musical theatre repertoire with purpose. 

There’s a newness at the start of a semester—especially a fall semester—that seems to open a window of opportunity and optimism for so many of us. Whether it’s a new resolve to design a realistic practice schedule or to attend more student productions and recitals, many find that this window can begin to shut quickly as the tempo of the semester accelerates toward fall breaks and midterms. 

One way to take fuller advantage of this time of newness is to break your goals down into easily actionable steps. And selecting and assigning repertoire is one way of doing this—and a great way to harness and optimize the momentum of the fall. For this discussion in “Crossover Corner” (an intersection of musical theatre and the classical world, we’ll focus on MT repertoire and ideas to keep you and/or your students engaged while developing a strategic mindset. To accomplish this, we’ll focus on Broadway and the current fall season. 

Most professional musical theatre auditions ask singers to bring in a cut of a song that’s in the style of the show. While this isn’t anything new, it can still feel a bit jarring for singers or their teachers when they feel they have to jump through yet one more hoop and make the effort to select and teach a new song, hopefully to have the opportunity to sing from the show at a callback. Here we’ll take a look at some musicals slated to preview and open on Broadway in the fall/late summer, and maybe even one or two shows that are Broadway bound in the spring. 

I invite you to lean into those feelings of newness and anticipation I mentioned earlier. Even if you feel that none of these shows are in your (or your students’) wheelhouse, keep your mind open (much like that window I mentioned earlier), not just to the specific shows but to the composers, the styles, and style periods that they’re all associated with. 

As you’re considering MT (and even pop!) repertoire for the semester ahead, or are planning an MT section of an opera workshop class, consider how the musicals and audition videos we see on TikTok, YouTube, and other media can help to give increased focus to how we plan and spend some of our most valuable capital—our time in the studio, practice room, and classroom.  

My husband shared with me that he saw the Mamma Mia! billboards going up at the Winter Garden Theatre, replacing the black-and-red title of George Clooney’s recently televised tour de force, Good Night, and Good Luck. Advertised as a play, Good Night, and Good Luck proved a powerful vehicle for singer Georgia Heers in the role of Ella/Jazz Singer. The tuneful nature of the Great American Songbook provided a powerful musical through line for the play and also provided another example of—from a strictly audition book perspective—the power of learning and having jazz standards at the ready. But back to the current 2025-2026 season:

Mamma Mia! returns with its signature Europop jukebox tunes, initially recorded by the Swedish group ABBA. Singers looking to find a non-musical song (a frequently stipulated audition requirement) in the style of ABBA can easily take advantage of “Go Your Own Way” performed and recorded by Fleetwood Mac. 

Conversely, if a Fleetwood Mac musical emerges—and don’t confuse this with the play Stereophonic—then something from the Mamma Mia! or greater ABBA catalogues will more than suffice. And this is of course just one of many examples. Spotify playlists are amazing for this type of easy song and style research, as generated playlists tend to include other, similar groups and artists. 

And speaking of the Winter Garden Theatre, that’s where Beetlejuice the musical roared to life (or afterlife?) before the pandemic. This musical has quickly developed an almost fanatical following among fans, and continues to have a wildly successful touring life. This fall, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, BEETLEJUICE! will return to Broadway once again—so maybe we should call it a séance this time around? The style of this musical, with music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, pays nostalgic homage to some of the original movie soundtrack but is its own thing. The songs are eclectic, comic, and even circus-like. 

Some tunes, like “Dead Mom,” are hard-driving rock, while another song (“Girl Scout”) sounds like it was written for an episode of Sesame Street. To use the Fleetwood Mac formula example, have a listen to the song “What I Know Now” and then immediately listen to “Raise the Roof” from Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, or even Gretchen Wiener’s feature in “Meet the Plastics” from Mean Girls the Musical. 

The musical Ragtime will make its much-heralded return to Broadway in late September. The score, with music and lyrics by Broadway royalty Flaherty and Ahrens, contains some of the team’s most gripping, tuneful, and expertly stylized songs. Drawing our attention, or our students’ attention, to this momentous revival can provide a compelling gateway to explore other musicals by these writers: Once on This Island, Anastasia, and A Man of No Importance, to name just a few. 

And if we future-trip into the spring semester/season, a revival of Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels—a 1925 comedy about bad manners—has been planned. The production will star Kelli O’Hara alongside Rose Byrne. And although Fallen Angels is a play, I’ll take this opportunity, along with O’Hara’s status as the leading crossover icon, to assign my university students some Noël Coward songs like “If Love Were All” (Bitter Sweet) and “I’ve Been Invited to a Party” (The Girl Who Came to Supper). Additionally, the late, great Broadway icon Elaine Stritch repeatedly pays homage to the composer through stories and songs, including “I’ve Been to a Marvelous Party” (Broadway Revue: Set to Music), on her live recording of Elaine Strich at Liberty. 

So many of us learn best through effective story telling, and Stritch’s compelling, autobiographical one-woman show not only educates listeners on Noël Coward and his influence on Stritch, but also offers vivid glimpses into the world of a bygone Broadway—and one that paved the way for, and ushered in, a great transformer of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim. 

The teasers above offer only a small sampling of what’s in store in the New York City Theater district this fall and beyond. But it’s my hope that singers and their teachers will be able to view and use what’s onstage at the moment to find heightened relevance in the studio, workshop setting, recital planning, and beyond. Happy practicing, and happy fall semester!