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Tony Award® winning Paper Mill Playhouse is pleased to announce a partnership with the online arts platform Acceptd and top tier university musical theater programs to introduce universal criteria for video submissions known as the Musical Theater Common Prescreen.

“Since 2015, we have seen a 66% increase in total submissions to musical theater programs working with Acceptd,” shared Don Hunter, co-founder & visionary at Acceptd. Hunter adds, “With the increased number of high school seniors applying to and auditioning for college and university musical theater programs, a need for institutions to vet applicants early in their senior year was created and that’s one way Acceptd supports these programs.” For almost a decade, colleges have turned to digital prescreen auditions to help balance the enormous influx of applicants and to determine which applicants will be invited to audition for the programs in person.

Kaitlin Hopkins, Head of Musical Theatre at Texas State University, added “Until now colleges and universities each created school-specific guidelines that would leave students applying to multiple schools with stress, confusion, and the need to create dozens of media files.”

In meetings held in New York City and Chicago, Paper Mill and Acceptd facilitated a conversation among key colleges and universities to craft common guidelines for all musical theater prescreen auditions. “These universal criteria are intended to streamline the digital prescreen process while keeping with current industry standards for auditioning musical theater performers,” Stephen Agosto, Senior Manager of Artistic Engagement at Paper Mill Playhouse, described.