Dear Student,

Thank you for your interest in theater at Bates. Let me take this opportunity to tell you about our program.

Theater at Bates is both a field of academic study and an extra-curricular activity. As an academic department, our goal is to provide a comprehensive introduction to all areas of theater. Our program gives equal emphasis to artistic training and to the study of the literature, history, and theory of the stage. We offer courses ranging from classical drama to performance art, and provide instruction in acting, directing, dance, and design. Building on this foundation, students who are interested in pursuing a career in the field are well prepared for further work at the graduate or conservatory level, or for graduate work in related fields in the humanities.

Pre-professional training, while important, is only one of our objectives. We are also committed to teaching theater as a liberal art in the context of a traditional liberal arts college. This means that our students learn how to think critically and creatively about a major art form, and how to give those thoughts artistic and scholarly expression. They explore their talents both as individuals studying texts and ideas, and as members of a group creating a production. This provides an intellectual and emotional wholeness not readily available in many other fields of study.

It also prepares our students for careers in fields such as law, teaching, and business which require public poise, skill in communication, and the ability to work creatively with others.

While students can earn academic credit for work in production, participation in theater and dance can also be purely extra-curricular. In a typical academic year, students--majors and non-majors alike--will work on a dozen or more events in dance and drama. These will include old plays, new plays, and non-plays in the performance art tradition. Students will also encounter choreographic work ranging across the whole spectrum of modern dance.

Recent seasons have included Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew, Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, and Ben Elton’s biting satire on Hollywood, Popcorn.

Our Short Term Unit Theater s33 Theater and Film in Central Europe takes students to Budapest and other cities for five weeks. While there, we study the region’s theater and film since 1945. Students also attend the Contemporary Drama Festival in Budapest, and meet with distinguished directors, playwrights, actors, and scholars from Central Europe.

This year, we are producing a season of American plays, including Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece, The Skin of Our Teeth, and America’s first comedy, The Contrast by Royall Tyler.

Students interested in avant-garde theater have the opportunity to work with Guggenheim Award winner, William Pope. L,  a nationally-known artist who teaches playwriting and performance art at Bates.

Our productions are done in three theaters. Schaeffer Theater, our largest space, houses a professionally-equipped proscenium stage and seats 324 spectators. The Gannett Theater is a flexible space, one of New England's most innovative and exciting performance facilities. The Black Box, seating fifty people, is our studio theater, an intimate arena where students can experiment as actors, directors, and designers.

Students who have studied theater at Bates have gone on to a broad range of careers, including careers on stage. Our graduates have been accepted for advanced study in acting, directing, playwriting, design, and management at such schools as Columbia University, Yale Drama School, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College, Brandeis University, Indiana University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Washington, the Neighborhood Playhouse School, and the London Drama Studio.

And our graduates have worked professionally at such theaters as the Steppenwolf Theater, Arena Stage, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the American Repertory Theater, the Yale Repertory Theater, the Hartford Stage Company, the Indiana Repertory Theater, the Spoleto Festival, the Beverly Hills Playhouse and the Manhattan Theater Club.

If you would like more information about theater at Bates, please feel free to contact me. If you visit the campus, be sure to drop in on us at Schaeffer Theater. We would be happy to show you around and introduce you to our students and faculty.

Sincerely,

Martin Andrucki
Chair