Mar 28, 2024  
Undergraduate Record 2017-2018 
    
Undergraduate Record 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED RECORD]

Drama


Return to: College of Arts & Sciences: Departments/Programs  


Drama Building, 109 Culbreth Road
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400128
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4128
(434) 924-3326 Fax: (434) 924-1447
www.virginia.edu/drama
 

Program/Course

Overview The department’s mission is to provide a creative and intellectually stimulating environment in which to study and produce dramatic arts. The department’s interdependent academic and production programs strive to broaden students’ understanding of society and culture by exploring personal expression in a variety of theatrical disciplines. Students are encouraged to practice theatre by actively engaging in a search for vital connections between theatre’s role in the past and present, and its future purpose in the world. Also, the department endeavors to serve as a major cultural resource for the greater University and regional communities.

Because it is essential that students be involved in every aspect of theatre, the department provides every possible opportunity for students to work as directors, actors, designers, stage managers, technicians, and playwrights. Majors are expected to participate in the production program and attend all productions. Students complete studio and course assignment work in every production area and compete successfully in auditions for roles in main-stage and laboratory theatre productions. The program offers a wide range of projects for undergraduates, from acting in scenes for directing classes, to staging work for classes in other departments. In some cases, students also work as designers on one or more of the main season productions. The B.A. program provides its students with intellectual stimulation and a healthy creative challenge.

The Department of Drama has modern facilities that accommodate all classroom, studio, and production activities. The complex includes two theatres: the 530 seat Culbreth, with its large, well-equipped proscenium stage, the flexible Helms, which seats 160-200 people and the Ruth Caplin theatre, a thrust theatre that seats 310 people. Large and modern scene, costume, and property shops, as well as offices, rehearsal studios, dressing rooms, and computer labs, complete the facility. An excellent Fine Arts Library is only a few steps away.

Faculty The department boasts a nationally renowned resident faculty with solid experience and an understanding of the demands of the professional theatre in its many manifestations. Guest artists often augment the resident faculty, providing an on-going professional presence that offers students immediate experience in the ideas and practice of today’s theatre. All of the faculty spend significant time outside of the classroom working personally with serious theatre students.

Students At any given time, there are approximately eighty drama or undeclared majors.