The Bachelor of Arts in Theatre combines broad training across the entire theatre-making process with the academic flexibility of a leading liberal arts university. Designed for students passionate about storytelling, stagecraft, and collaboration, the program provides a broad foundation while allowing you to explore multiple interests and shape your own creative path.
Students build skills in acting, movement, dramatic literature, stagecraft, and performance while working closely with accomplished faculty in intentionally small classes. Through hands-on experiences in the Robert and Judi Newman Center for the Performing Arts—including the Byron Flexible Theatre, costume shop, and scene shop—you'll perform, create, and develop the collaborative skills that bring live theatre to life.
Along the way, you'll cultivate communication, creativity, adaptability, and leadership, preparing you for a career in theatre, film, arts leadership, education, and many other fields. Students may pursue Distinction in Acting, Design, Directing, Dramaturgy, Playwriting, Stage Management, Theatre, or Theatre History.
Senior Capstones
Year four culminates in a Senior Capstone that puts you in the director's chair. Each theatre student produces a fully realized 10-minute play—from selecting (or even writing) the script to casting actors, leading rehearsals, managing a production budget, and collaborating with a team of designers and technicians. Over three weeks, you'll bring your artistic vision to life before presenting your work in a public performance. It's an immersive, real-world experience that challenges you to lead, create, collaborate, and showcase everything you've learned as a theatre artist.
Audition Requirements
Auditions are not required for admission to the Bachelor of Arts in Theatre. However, theatre students interested in theatre merit-based scholarship consideration must complete an audition or interview. Details may be found on the Department of Theatre page.
Degree Requirements
- Students complete a minimum of 45 credit hours for the theatre major.
- In addition to foundation courses, requirement areas include acting, directing, design & management, theatre history, studio, production and senior capstone.
- Distinction is available for students who demonstrate significant qualities of professional work in their field.
- Students complete 24 credit hours for the theatre minor.
See the DU Undergraduate Bulletin for more information about degree requirements.
Theatre at DU Offers:
Opportunities to work directly with world-renowned actors, designers and directors
State-of-the-art rehearsal and performance spaces like the Newman Center for the Performing Arts
Real-world experience creating full productions from all periods and genres
Independent productions and collaborative projects that connect the classroom to the stage
A blend of creative, technical and managerial experience to prepare you for a wide range of careers
Featured Courses
THEA 1800
Fundamentals of Theatre Design
About this Course
The work of the theatre designer is to transform a text into visual and aural expression, by planning and creating the physical environment of a live performance. Students will learn about -- and learn appreciation for -- theatre design in order to be better theatre artists (and audience members) themselves, through the applied practice of designing a "paper" production, collaboratively with a small team.
THEA 2870
Acting I
About this Course
Exploration of acting through physical and vocal exercises, followed by scene study. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.
THEA 2890
Theatre History I
About this Course
This course examines the development of Western theatre and drama from the Ancient Greeks to the 19th-Century, concentrating on the intellectual, social and artistic foundations of theatre and drama. The course is designed to engage theatre from its theatrical, social, cultural, and historical contexts. The lecture-discussion format of this course is intended to foster an active engagement among the students with the theatre and drama of the past. Through in-class readings, discussions of the readings, written assignments, and presentations, students are encouraged to consider the material under investigation from sociohistorical and theatrical perspectives, as well as from the material's relation and relevance to the present. The focus is on theatre and drama representative of the major styles, authors, and genres from Fifth-Century B.C.E. into the early 19th-Century. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.
