Host of 'Glee'-type contest is former winner
NEW YORK — This year’s host of the National High School Musical Theater Awards will certainly be comfortable handling the contest. After all, he won it three years ago.
Ryan McCartan, who co-stars in “Liv & Maddie” on the Disney Channel and “Royal Pains” on USA, returns to the same Broadway stage where in 2011 he won the “Glee”-like competition for musical teenagers.
“I was so thrilled to be asked,” said McCartan. “I do attribute a lot of my success to wining that award because it gave me this gigantic step forward in my self-confidence. Had I not possessed that, I don’t think I could have done anything that I’ve done.”
Nicknamed the Jimmy Awards after theater owner James Nederlander, contest winners receive a $10,000 scholarship award, capping a months-long winnowing process that began with 60,000 students from 1,500 schools and ends at the Minskoff Theatre, the long-term home of “The Lion King.”
The 56 teens who made it to New York this year for the sixth edition — 28 girls and 28 boys — will get a five-day theatrical boot camp at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, complete with scrambling to learn an opening and closing group number, advice on their solo songs, plus a field trip to watch a Broadway show.
“It’s such a whirlwind experience. What these finalists go through, it’s such a grueling week,” McCartan said. “The hours are long and the expectations from your peers and directors and coaches is the highest of the high.”
