Creating A Musical Theatre Resume

Your resume is probably the most important document you will ever have as a performer. It provides information about your training, your experience, your talents. It provides information that can be vital to the choice of whether or not you are cast in a show. It's important that it show you off as effectively as possible, so to help you here are some guidelines.

• Make it short and sweet. Keep to one page if possible but definately no more than two or three.
• Resist the urge to make it "pretty". Simple but clean presentation is best. No funky fonts or crazy colours.
• Theatre people are sensitive about losing actors to film. List your theatre credits first.
• List smaller roles in big places (ie New York) before big roles in small places.
• List classic roles, such as Shakespeare, before others since they indicate the depth of your background.
• If you were directed by or performed with an important personality, list his/her name underneath the company you performed with.
• In general, try to list performances in choronological order (by date performed).

Format of a Theatre Resume

Most resumes have a standard format in which basic information is placed at the top, and all experience and training is put into a table, like this:

Musical Theatre
Name of the Show	Name of the Character	Production Co & Director	Year
Theatre
Film
Training

Then, after the table, you add in point form all your other miscellaneous activity.

More Theatre Resume Tips

Download a sample acting resume

Comments (4) >>

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written by Melanie, September 20, 2007

Don't put the year down... It dates your resume. While it may show that you worked for a lot of different theatres that year or that you ran a show for a whole year, it may construe different things. (not dedicated, couldn't find a job, flakey, or very popular) But I would rather them not wonder about those things and just look at my work.

Also sometimes it may be helpful to separate your work into categories. Such as Broadway, off-broadway, national tours, and regional theatre. Especially if your resume is mostly theatre or mostly musical theatre.

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written by Christina, November 08, 2007

Ok, I'm just starting out in theatre. I'm going to my second audition here in the next couple of weeks. What should I do if I don't have any show credits? Do I just list my training and other vocal and dance experience? My resume will be kind of short.

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written by Lizzy, November 27, 2007

Should I put things like my height, weight, hair color, or age on my resume?
And if a director asks for a resume but doesn't ask for a headshot, should I not give the director my headshot anyway?

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written by cecelia black, January 03, 2008

Could you go into detail about "Special Skills"

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