Courses

We believe that the best theater education combines experiential courses that emphasize learning-through-doing with theater studies courses in which students explore dramatic literature and performance within historical and cultural contexts.

View the video - Freshman Seminar: "Making Theater: Process to Performance."

We offer studio courses in which your artistic skills as an actor, director, designer, or playwright will be challenged and strengthened, including:

• Acting I, II, and III
• Advanced Scene Study: Styles
• Advanced Scene Study: Shakespeare
• Advance Scene Study: The Realists
• Design Aesthetics
• Directing I
• Playwriting Studio

Courses in theater history and dramatic literature (both inside and outside the department) will develop your analytical skills and provide you with opportunities to explore theatrical performance as a forum through which social concerns are debated and discussed, such as:

• Theater and Culture
• Seminar in Theater: Eugene O'Neill and His America
• Intersecting Performances: Dance-Theater (cross-listed with the dance department)
• Special Projects: Gender in Contemporary Performance (cross-listed with the department of Gender and Women's Studies)

If you are thinking of majoring in theater, we recommend that you take THE 104 (Acting I: Preparation), THE 120 (Technical Theater), THE 206 (Acting II: Script Analysis) and THE 141 (The Art of Theater) over the course of your first three semesters.

We encourage you to meet with a theater professor to discuss your interests and the major.