It seems like such a stunning campus and a good fit in many ways for my kid, but I wonder how active the theatre department is (it is one of my kid’s potential majors).
I admit, my eldest was not thrilled with the theatre department but I don’t know how fair her judgement is. She came in with a decade of training and professional experience. She knew she didn’t want to pursue theatre as an adult but she had considered double majoring just because she hadn’t really known a life without it (I was a stage manager for many years so she literally grew up in it.) She was totally turned off by the first required class… both very basic and incredibly labor intensive. The thought of completing the series depressed her so she didn’t. She did take some theatre lit classes that she did enjoy. she did a show her junior year and found it all around frustrating. The program is not lacking in talented people but there are some organizational issues. Again, not sure she’s the best judge but she still loved the school and our son is there now. He may do a show or two as well.
The theatre department is pretty active, and you don’t need to major or minor to participate! I was a dance minor, but also pretty involved in theatre, and was even inducted into the theatre honor society, Alpha Psi Omega (AYO).
In terms of department productions, there are two mainstage productions every semester, which you earn academic credit for being a part of. The first one in the spring is the PSIII showcase (more on that later), and the second one is a musical every other year. The department, AYO, and the student theater group (University Players- which I was a member of), all sponsor student productions as well. AYO runs the annual New Faces production in the fall (cast is primarily freshman, and all the directors and entire production team are current students) and Players puts on an annual Haunted House, among other things. Both the costume shop and scene shop have student employees, and there are also student employees on the electrics team. And crew for shows is also almost always entirely students, with the occasional exception, giving lots of opportunities to be involved.
The class that I assume @turtletime is referring to is the Production Studies sequence, particularly PS I. These courses are at the core of the major and teach students every aspect of production, including lighting and sound design, producing, directing, etc. The PS I course is known to be very demanding in terms of workload, but you come out of it with a lot of knowledge. The sequence culminates in PS III, a year long course in which the students spend the fall choosing a production and doing everything needed to put on the show, and then at the beginning of the spring semester, they cast the show and do all the production work. Everyone in the class has a backstage role in the production (directing, producing, marketing, lighting, costume, etc), and they’ll have additional students help if the class size is small (if there’s only 3 people in the class for example, they might have another student be stage manager, and pull in others to do board ops, etc).
Thanks, this is all very useful information
Do you happen to know about studio art?