Photo By Joan Marcus

Shoshana Bean, who starred in musical theater at UC's College-Conservatory of Music before her 1999 graduation, is now holding down the title role in Wicked, one of the hottest tickets on Broadway.

Graduates of the high-flying musical theater program at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) are all over Broadway these days. I went looking for them during an early February visit to New York City, and was impressed at how they've taken command of Broadway stages in visible roles. In fact, no fewer than five recent CCM grads have showy assignments in major productions.

A particular standout is Shoshana Bean (1999), playing the lead role of Elphaba in the Wizard of Oz-inspired musical, Wicked. It's the same green-skinned role that won Idina Menzel a Tony Award a year ago. Her signature song, "Defying Gravity," is a perfect description of the success CCM grads are finding onstage today in New York City.

Angela Gaylor (2002) plays the ingénue role of Anne in the lavish revival of La Cage aux Folles. Lisa Howard (1997) is the cloying hostess of a battle between geeky junior-high school whiz kids in the new, much-praised Off Broadway musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Sara Gettelfinger (1999) is holding down a significant role in the new musical rendition of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which features John Lithgow.

Even when I wasn't expecting to see CCM grads they turned up. Waiting for the revival of Fiddler on the Roof (now featuring Harvey Fierstein) to begin, I opened my program and found an insert announcing that the role of Tevye's daughter Chava, usually played by another actress, "will be played by Melissa Bohon." Bohon is a 2003 CCM grad who turned in several spunky Hot Summer Nights performances and, as a freshman, did a memorable guest appearance in the lead role of Anne in a reading of Green Gables at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati back in 2000.

Every year, CCM recruits a freshman class of roughly 25 musical theater majors. To assemble them, more than 600 aspiring performers are auditioned from coast to coast. That means the talent arriving annually is among the best in the nation. In fact, the common wisdom in the theater industry is that CCM is the top program for musical theater in the nation.

Watching Shoshana Bean as a persecuted girl with magical powers in Wicked, it's easy to see why. She has a big voice and the stage presence to handle a role that's become the adored object of thousands of teenage girls. Bean is quick to admit that she honed her talents in Cincinnati.

"The workload at CCM is so intense," she recalls. "We ran on complete adrenaline; there was never time to sleep." Her CCM experience prepared her for a competitive, critical theater industry. "Preparedness is key. We had to do so many things. They design it so well there, because you have so many deadlines. The amount of work you have to get done in a short amount of time while juggling 60 billion other things is overwhelming -- and that's how life is. You can be here working two jobs to make it and get called: 'Can you be at an audition in an hour?' You gotta be ready to sing that song, whether your voice is warmed up or not. You've gotta look cute in 20 minutes. They taught us that stuff."

Bean came all the way from Portland, Ore., to study at CCM. Angela Gaylor didn't have so far to travel from her home in Centerville, Ohio, south of Dayton, but she echoes Bean's observations. "Once you get here, you are so prepared. They're so hard on you at CCM -- in a good way -- that you get here and you're like, this is easy."

Gaylor, who starred in CCM productions of Grand Hotel, Secret Garden and Dracula, says the key lesson she learned was to be true to herself. "To really find out who you are as a person, nothing to do with performing -- and to carry that into your work. The worst thing to do is to put on a face or a shtick in your everyday life." She keeps her Ohio roots with her: "That's where I grew up. It's very much a part of me."

Both Gaylor and Bean say the hothouse environment at CCM made them better. "You know you're with the best ... the best of the best," Bean observes. "You can't rest on your laurels anymore. You've gotta work your butt off. You have to find what it is about you that's different. What's going to make me the individual that I am?"

Bean, who was also in the original cast of Hairspray, has had to draw on her acting skills to play the complicated Elphaba. "It's hard," she says. "She's very complicated. She's so different from Shoshana. I'm so used to just being able to fit into a role and bring a lot of Shoshana to it."

Bean cites two of her 1999 classmates as being among the best vocalists in the business: Leslie Kritzer (who's had her share of noteworthy roles, including the lead in Funny Girl at New Jersey's high profile Paper Mill Playhouse) and Kristy Cates (who was Bean's college roommate and is now her understudy in Wicked). When those are your college classmates, auditions aren't nearly so daunting.

Gaylor says CCM made her strong, too. The program gave her the tools she needed to make the most of her talent, she says, adding, "when you come to New York, nothing is handed to you." Given the attention Gaylor, Bean and others are earning these days, CCM's musical theater credential is the new gold standard.