Abstract:

Experiential learning emphasizes the process of learning rather than solely its outcomes. Within this framework, students engage in the active construction of meaning through experimentation, reflection, and inquiry, while also assuming responsibility for their learning and outcome. In the experiential learning environment, the teacher facilitates rather than directs the process, cultivating conditions that encourage spontaneity, exploration, and discovery. Consequently, the student’s lived experience becomes central to the learning process, shifting instruction away from a teacher-centered model toward a collaborative and exploratory one. The teacher acts as a guide who supports students as they imagine, analyze, experience, reflect, and ultimately make informed artistic decisions.

Within musical theatre performance, the exploration of a character’s essence is fundamental to producing engaged and emotionally authentic performances. Audiences are most deeply moved when performances convey genuine meaning and emotional truth. A performer may execute a musical theatre song with musical accuracy and refined vocal technique developed through vocal training. However, when a meaningful personal connection to the character—and to the performer’s own artistic essence—is absent, the performance risks remaining technically proficient yet emotionally detached. In such cases, singers may portray emotions, desires, or motivations without fully living and experiencing them in the moment of performance, resulting in interpretations that lack the transformative qualities capable of connecting the artist and audience.

This research draws upon key principles of existentialism as a theoretical framework to reconsider the phenomenon of emotionally disengaged musical theatre singing. Existentialist philosophy offers a lens through which the artistic and interpretive processes of singers may be examined and re-imagined. In particular, the research examines several core principles articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre, including existence, essence, freedom, and responsibility. These notions provide a philosophical foundation for examining aspects of musical theatre singing and acting that may remain underdeveloped among vocal students in higher education.

The study investigates how experiential learning, informed by existentialist principles, can foster artistic freedom and support the development of students’ identities as singing actors. Student participants were guided through processes that encouraged experimentation, reflection, and critical self-awareness. They were invited to make interpretive choices, explore multiple perspectives, and assume responsibility for the meaning they constructed within their performances. Through analyzing musical theatre repertoire using existentialist concepts, students engaged with their songs not merely as words, notes and rhythms, but as opportunities for authentic artistic expression.

When singers approach musical theatre performance through experiential learning informed by Sartrean principles, each performance has the potential to emerge from a distinct perspective shaped by the performer’s evolving lived experience. In this way, the act of performance becomes a site of continual artistic becoming, where singers actively shape and redefine their essence as singing actors.

Keywords:

Experiential learning, existentialist principles, higher education, musical theatre, artistic freedom.