Do you have to be a good actor to be in musical theatre?

Two words: Marti Pellow.

You don't have to be a good actor to be in musical theatre.
You do have to be a good actor to be in musical theatre and not suck something chronic.

I don't know why there's so much confusion over this.

I think among the rubbish he also spouts he does have a point re: training. In that the training on MT specific courses is very different to the acting courses. And of course that actors on a 'straight' acting course get a bit of MT training, but those on MT courses don't get as much in-depth acting training.

And it's arguable that's because dance and singing DO require that level of focused and specific training for the level at which MT performers need it.

All that said though, acting is never 100% taught, it's a talent that some have and some don't (apparently one Mr Freeman is lacking himself if twitter is to be believed) And so while MT actors might have less training in the acting side of things because they focused on the rest of their skill set in training it doens't mean they're any less talented.

How is soap actor the lowest of the low when the likes of Ian McKellen and Jenna Russell have trodden the studio sets, and shows like E4's Stage School exist?

I have no idea how to link an old thread topic on here (can anyone else help??) but if you search The (now obligatory) standing ovation (in General Chat) you can have a read through some previous discussions on the topic.

Yes, there's a difference between talent and skill. Talent is innate, skill is something you develop.

Someone on a MT course may have the same talent as someone on a straight acting course, but they haven't developed the same skill because they've focused on developing different, MT-specific, skills. That's doesn't mean they can't or won't develop those skills - lots of directors have said that MT crosses over well with Shakespeare because there's something about the heightened performance of both that translates, if you are prepared to put the time in with those actors during rehearsal.

Do you have to be a good actor to be in theatre?

It helps. Acting talent, some charisma, solid technique are all desirable attributes - and I bet every one of us can name actors who have built long and successful careers on two out of three, or one out of three, or very little apart from a pretty face.

Beyond that, it depends on the role. In musicals, there are certainly roles where a thrilling voice or spectacular dance skills are more important than being a "good actor", whatever that means - but there are also roles where those elements come second to acting skill. Much as I think she's wonderful, you wouldn't ever have cast Imelda Staunton as, for example, Fantine. To play Fantine successfully, quite apart from whether you can act, you really need the kind of voice that can raise goosebumps when you sing 'I Dreamed a Dream' (in that instance, the English lyrics are so astonishingly vapid that a performer who doesn't have that kind of voice would have nowhere to hide). For the death scene, some acting ability is useful, but there are people who've done well enough in the role without it. On the other hand, Staunton is currently playing Sally in 'Follies' and she's wonderful in it, even though she doesn't bring nearly as much voice to the role as Julia McKenzie did in the original London production. In that case, Staunton's acting choices more than compensate for her (significant) vocal shortcomings. It's a terrific performance, but there are roles where you can't get away with privileging acting ability over the voice.

Of course, having said all that, the ideal would be to have both - as Julia McKenzie did when she played Sally.

Singing is performance, dancing is performance. Both ideally involve a form of acting - but you can succeed in either field without the kind of acting ability you'd need to get through even the most rudimentary dialogue scene.

Indeed - and there are some shades of meaning in the post you're quoting that appear to have gone over your head. "Acting", depending on the medium, encompasses a vast range of skill sets, not all of which are transferable between performance genres. The tools a dancer would use to act a role like, say, Giselle aren't necessarily going to be a great deal of use to an actress trying to play Reno Sweeney (or Rose, or Julie Jordan, or Amalia Balash, or... you get the idea.) Some people can negotiate both sets of skills - just as some actors made the transition from silent to talkies, which again demanded two different skill sets - but most can't.

No, my belief (and my background is in both acting and singing) is that the skills are similar, vocal technique is vocal technique, physicality is physicality. The level and the flavour of the skill is different (which is what makes the different performance mediums) but the skill is transferable. In the same way I don’t teach stage and screen acting as separate skills, just as a variation.

And we’ll all literally DIE.