About Theatre Arts

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Please browse this Web site to learn more about what makes the Department of Theatre Arts at Chico State a distinctive artistic home for our students and for the northern Sacramento Valley community. For example:

• We offer majors leading to the BA degree in theatre arts and musical theatre as well as minors in theatre arts and musical theatre dance.
• We present eight annual productions in three very different theatre spaces: the 450 seat "traditional proscenium" Harlen Adams Theatre, the intimate 200-seat "black box" Larry Wismer Theatre and the classic 1200 seat Laxson Auditiorium.
• We believe in focused, pre-professional training within the context of broad, liberal arts study.
• Our faculty of twelve (six full-time and six part-time) are committed academics with strong professional backgrounds and on-going involvement in their fields regionally, nationally, and internationally. Among the faculty are two Ph.Ds, five MFAs, and three MAs. Five are members of Actor's Equity Association.
• The department's professional technical staff of five provide production and design support and additional "hand-on" mentoring of students.
• We are active in the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival and offer many opportunities to participate in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.
• Our alumni routinely earn places at prestigious graduate schools and training programs throughout the country and abroad.
• Manywork professionally as actors, designers, technicians, and stage managers in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, on national tours, in various regional theatres, theme parks/cruise lines, and in film and television.
• We offer several scholarships just for theatre arts and musical theatre majors.
• Alongside faculty mentors, students assume the bulk of production responsibilities: acting, stage managing, most technical construction and crew positions, and as directing, design, and choreography assistants.
• Our students produce, direct, and design a full evening of one-act plays annually.
• Qualified students may work as paid shop and clerical assistants in the School of the Arts and as technicians and stage managers for touring shows that use the university facilities.
• We are large enough to be competitive, but small enough to know our students' names. Approximately 100 majors are split between the two degrees.
• With an average student/faculty ratio in upper division classes of 16/1, students receive plenty of individual instruction and advising.