Theatre

Faculty: Jared Larkin, Spencer Potter, Michael Vought, Nina Vought

Theatre Courses

Mission

The mission of the Department of Theatre at Westminster College is to use the College’s core values to frame the way theatre work is conceived and practiced:

• • impassioned teaching and learning
  • respect for diversity
  • collaboration and teamwork
  • personal and social responsibility
  • excellence
  • high ethical standards

The Department of Theatre members are dedicated to creating the academic and artistic contexts that help students: 1) master various aspects of theatrical work (i.e., design, directing, dramaturgy, new work development, and performance); 2) investigate how theatre, culture, and community have intersected, are linked in the present, and could be connected in the future; and, 3) cultivate healthy habits that facilitate powerful theatre work.

Program Goals

• Students will develop the skills needed to produce creative, expressive, and distinctive work—on the page, on-stage, and backstage.
• Students will learn to deeply appreciate the role of story as the driving energy in all theatrical work—artistic and academic.
• Students will demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to facilitate the collaborative, ensemble environment that is the hallmark of great theatre.
• Students will embrace their role as inductees into the centuries-old fraternity of theatre artists.
• Students will demonstrate the ability to think, write, and speak self-reflectively, analytically and fluently, about their own and other’s work.
• Students will expand their personal, social, and global understanding through engagement in an intentionally diverse array of theatre work—on campus, in site-specific settings, and in community contexts.
• Students will explore the connection between physical, mental, and emotional health and successful theatre work.
• Performance BFAs select and prepare appropriate repertoire to market themselves, audition for future theatre work, and/or successfully pursue graduate studies.
• Technical theatre BFAs will design and produce effective portfolios that showcase their knowledge, skills, and personal qualities and help them secure future theatre work and/or successfully pursue graduate studies.
• BA theatre majors will demonstrate the core artistic and academic competencies that inform all theatre studies and incorporate the knowledge, skills, and personal qualities of focused theatre work in their choice of career paths.
• All theatre students will appreciate the value of authentic inquiry, the need for risk taking, and the lifelong skills of effective self-evaluation, active listening, spontaneous generosity, and insatiable curiosity.

 

Objectives

The Theatre program offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree with emphases in performance and technical theatre. It also offers a generalist Theatre major (BA) and a Theatre minor. Our programs prepare students for entry into the professional theatre, graduate studies, educational theatre, applied theatre and a wide array of other fields wherein theatre intersects with various arts, business, and industry. All degree programs are designed to provide students with practical production experience in order to enable their unique creative expression in the theatre. To this end, students will gain a broad understanding of theatre history, theory, and practice and they will, depending on their chosen emphasis, train rigorously in specific areas such as auditioning, acting technique, stage lighting, costuming, management, and design.

In addition to successful completion of all course requirements, theatre majors must satisfy the following expectations in order to be eligible for graduation:

Holistic Health Requirement:

Theatre students are encouraged to cultivate healthy practices including mindfulness, body awareness, flexibility, and endurance through mandatory hours spent engaging in physical and mental training.  Hours can be completed at the Dolores Doré Eccles Health, Wellness and Athletic Center, or logged in the personal practice of your choice. (This requirement can be “double-dipped” with yoga, dance, exercise, meditation and similar courses.)

Ensemble Requirement:

Students are expected to complete a minimum of twenty hours of crew and/or production work each year.  This can be satisfied working in or on any departmental production.

Applied Theatre Requirement:

At least once in your course of study, majors are required to utilize theatre training in a social, political or educational (non-theatrical) setting in a manner that is collaborative, politically engaged and culturally aware. Some examples include: education, the justice system, healthcare, the political arena, community development, museums, social service agencies, business and industry. Students will coordinate the project with their advisor and will write a reflective five-page essay on the experience. Specific details of these requirements can be found in the theatre student’s handbook.Students will meet each semester with their faculty advisor to discuss successful completion of these requirements and to review the student’s academic and artistic progress. Once every year a faculty panel will review each student’s coursework, production work and e-portfolio reflections in order to provide constructive feedback and to design a set of goals for the following year.

Program Requirements

Students must maintain a minimum 2.5 GPA in courses required for the major and/or minor. With the approval of the instructor, students may repeat specified courses for additional credit.Students must meet the college-wide graduation requirements in addition to the Theatre major:

• 124 total hours
• 30 upper division hours
• WCore or Honors requirements

 

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Degree (BFA)

Students may declare an area of emphasis and apply for acceptance into the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre program in the spring of their sophomore year. For the Technical Theatre emphasis, students must submit a portfolio; for the Performance emphasis, students must audition. The portfolio/audition should contain examples of work that the student has produced while at Westminster College. The application is due to the program chair by February 15. The BFA admissions committee will review the portfolios/auditions and notify students prior to registration for the Fall Semester. Students who are not accepted may continue working as academic majors and reapply the following year. Transfer students will apply in their second semester and follow the same process for acceptance to the BFA track, except that the portfolio may contain work produced while studying at other institutions of higher education.

 

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with Performance Emphasis

Recommended Plan of Study for BFA Theatre with Performance Emphasis

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with Production and Design Emphasis

 

Recommended Plan of Study for BFA in Theatre with Production and Design Emphasis

 

Bachelor of Arts in Theatre

*Note: Although THTR 228 and THTR 328 are variable credit, students may count only two credits toward required courses and two credits toward elective courses. Additional credits may count for elective credits with approval of program chair.

Recommended Plan of Study for BA Theatre

Theatre Arts Minor

*Note: Although THTR 228 and THTR 328 are variable credit, students may count only two credits toward required courses and two credits toward elective courses. Additional credits may count for elective credits with approval of program chair.

Recommended Plan of Study for Theatre Minor