The Musical Theater program at Rider prepares students for a professional career in musical theater through Broadway, Off-Broadway, national touring with veteran faculty and regular interface with top industry professionals.  This program is provided in a nurturing liberal arts environment just one hour from New York City at Rider's Lawrenceville campus.

The Musical Theater program offers:

• Development of well-rounded, competitive musical theater professionals  
  Rider’s professional musical theater faculty are committed to developing students’ talents and technique in all areas – from vocal, dance and dramatic performance to auditioning – preparing them to succeed in the highly competitive world of professional musical theater.

• Affording invaluable interface with top industry professionals
  Rider’s Musical Theater program engages Broadway composers, agents, choreographers, directors, producers and other key professionals in workshops and master classes, through productions, networking visits and showcases in New York, creating invaluable, competitive edge connections that last a lifetime. Rider’s Musical Theatre Business Lab will prepare students for a comprehensive career in the business, not just musical theatre.

• Making performance possible
  Rider is committed to ensuring that its musical theater majors perform, by mounting multiple mainstage productions among three performance spaces.  Concert and/or workshop performances, staged readings and student productions afford additional opportunities for students to apply what their learning in performance. 

• Keeping Broadway within reach
  Rider is ideally located just one hour from the world’s musical theater mecca – Broadway – and just 45 minutes from the rich cultural offerings of Philadelphia.  From affordable, student-sponsored Broadway performance trips to special student discounts, class-related Broadway field-trips and backstage tours or just a quick visit via the nearby train, Rider Musical Theater students will find Broadway learning experiences within reach.

• Teaching from professional, real-world experience
  Rider’s Musical Theater faculty represents a combined century of Broadway, Off-Broadway and national touring experience, working with and learning from the Nation’s greatest directors, choreographers, music directors and performers.  Such a vast and varied wealth of knowledge and experience helps students develop a competitive real-world focus.

  Learn more about the School of Fine and Performing Arts faculty.

• Fostering a broad, liberal arts perspective
  Rider Musical Theater students enjoy the advantage of being part of a vibrant liberal arts learning environment with the added benefit of more intimate class sizes and closer interface with faculty.  As part of Rider’s Westminster College of the Arts, musical theater students can integrate anything from Arts Administration to a History of the Beatles, Painting and Drawing into their program of learning, along with core university coursework ranging from Political Science to Literature.