Theatre

The Department of Theatre is a dynamic and intensive program with experienced professors, an active production season, scheduled workshops, guest artists, and special events. The curriculum is based on a liberal arts foundation providing all students with the“Theatre core” courses in various aspects of the theatrical art, including history and criticism, performance, directing, design, technical production, and Theatre education — the background and skills important for individual development and necessary in professional life.

Students of all walks of academic life participate in theatre courses and production activity. In this light, Theatre is more than a major program at King’s College; the Theatre is a service in the highest sense to the overall mission and goals of the college. Theatre stands with disciplines such as Mass Communications, English, Education, Philosophy, Psychology, or History, concerned with educating a central core of majors while exerting a humanizing and liberalizing influence on students. The theatre department also has made a commitment to equality and anti-racism.

Students in Theatre choose between two areas of concentration: Acting/Directing Track or Design/Technical Track. The Theatre faculty strives for high degrees of excellence and professionalism in its diverse academic and production offerings. Expert faculty guide students in the study, process, and practical application of selection, research, analysis, design, casting, rehearsal, staging, and marketing through a wide variety of theatrical presentations. This effectively challenges, stimulates, and expands the knowledge, skills, talents, and creative abilities of Theatre students, faculty, and staff. Theatre is a collaborative art and the faculty expects students to exert leadership and accept positions of responsibility as they mature. Student directors and designers, for example, may receive mainstage experience rarely available to the undergraduate in other Theatre programs. The Faculty consistently strives to present high-quality educational Theatre productions and related programming to an ever-increasing public audience from the College and the greater community.

In addition to a comprehensive academic program, the Theatre department mounts a full production program of four mainstage productions annually. Additionally, a Brown Bag Theatre Series and Evening of One-Acts productions are produced each semester. In addition to an annual mainstage Shakespearean production, the works of both classic and contemporary playwrights are staged in arena, thrust, open stage, environmental, and proscenium styles providing students invaluable experience rarely found in Theatre programs.

Students majoring in Theatre have considerable flexibility in choosing courses, though selections should be made in consultation with a departmental advisor in the light of the individual student’s interest and career goals. Because the commerce of Theatre requires a host of ancillary skills not commonly included in a Theatre major curriculum and because some Theatre majors will earn their living in areas outside of Theatre after college, the Theatre major is constructed so as to allow students to add a second major. Minor programs in Theatre satisfy the interests of students in curricula too rigid to allow a second major in Theatre. Upon successful completion of Theatre coursework, students are well prepared to apply their skills in a variety of theatrical industries and various fields outside the Theatre world. King’s College Theatre alumni are found in important positions throughout many aspects of the theatre community or have gone on to prestigious graduate programs.