About Theatre

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WELCOME!

Please browse this Web site to learn more about what makes the Department of Theatre 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 and musical theatre as well as minors in theatre arts and musical theatre dance.
• We are accredited and are an institutional member of NAST (National Association of Schools of Theatre).
• We present our 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 Auditorium.
• We believe in focused, pre-professional training within the context of broad, liberal arts study.
• Our faculty are committed academics with strong professional backgrounds and on-going involvement in their fields regionally, nationally, and internationally. The faculty includes PhDs, MFAs, and MAs, plus several are members of Actor’s Equity Association.
• The department's professional technical staff provide production and design support and additional "hand-on" mentoring of students and includes a student-run costume rental program. Please contact sbarton@csuchico for additional information..
• 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.
• Many work 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 direct a full evening of one-act plays every other year, and choreograph a full evening of original dances every other year, as part of our program.
• 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. 
• More than 100 majors are split between THEATRE majors and MUSICAL THEATRE majors.
• With an average student/faculty ratio in upper division classes of 18/1, students receive plenty of individual instruction and advising.