Production Program – Theatre & Dance

Current Season – Theatre & Dance

2024-25 Performance Season

• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, October 10-13 2024
• It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry, November 21-24 2024
• Student Directed One-Acts, December 6-8 2024
• Godspell, Music by Stephen Schwartz, Book by John-Michael Tebelak, March 27-April 1 2025
• Spring Dance Showcase, April 11 2025
• An Evening of Caryl Churchill, Featuring the plays Heart’s Desire & Escaped Alone, May 2-4 2025

Our Mission Statement

The Department of Theatre & Dance is dedicated to creating “total theatre-makers”. We believe that the performing arts provide the indispensable social functions of Entertainment, Enlightenment, and Education. For the theatre artist, performing arts teaches practical skills including collaboration, creative problem solving, communicative clarity, organizational prowess, ethics, and time management skills, just to name a few. We are artists, but we are also engaged in the practical application of an entertainment business. To that end, students will learn, both in the classroom and in the theatre “laboratory”, every aspect of theatre production. We believe that the performing arts can provide life-affirming experiences for both the practitioner and the consumer, and reveal truths about the human experience in a dynamic way.

Our mission is to provide a nurturing and challenging educational environment through a rich diversity of theatre and dance disciplines, techniques, technologies and productions. Central to our focus as a department is superior teaching, hands-on production-based learning, and personalized mentoring; our classroom encompasses the studio, the stage, and the technical laboratory.

Department Goals

The Department of Theatre & Dance aims to:

• Foster academic excellence through development of programs that meet national standards

• Promote quality personnel with expertise in their areas of teaching.
• Enhance the cultural and aesthetic experience of our campus, community and region through quality productions, leadership, and service learning.
• Embrace a standard of artistic excellence, which is enhanced by aggressive pursuit of summer internships and other professional development opportunities.
• Create widespread visibility through our active participation with the KCACTF, USITT, URTA, ATHE, UTA and other professional/educational organizations.
• Prepare students for successful transfer to graduate or conservatory programs or to pursue professional careers in the theatre and dance performance, theatre and dance education, or allied fields.

Extra-Curricular Opportunities

• The Department of Theatre & Dance produces at least five main stage productions every season, giving the students many opportunities to hone their skills on and off stage. We strive to offer a variety of styles to best prepare our students for the professional world. Every season we seek to produce at least one musical, one classical work, something experimental, something heavy, and something that is fun, and funny, for all.
• The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival – we enter all main stage productions for participation and attend the week-long regional festival every January. It provides opportunities to network, a variety of workshops, scholarship competitions, professional auditions, interviews, performances, and countless ways for students to expand their creative horizons.