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Theatre Department
Department of Theatre
The Curriculum
All courses, including stage productions, offered by the Barnard College Department of Theatre are open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduate students. The undergraduate theatre major is housed in the Barnard College Department of Theatre, and is offered to all undergraduate Barnard College, Columbia College, and General Studies students (the Columbia major is designated “Drama and Theatre Arts”). The major program engages the disciplines of drama, theatre, and performance studies as a distinctive mode of intellectual and artistic inquiry. While Barnard and Columbia students fulfill the overall graduation requirements at their respective institutions (the Core at Columbia, Foundations at Barnard), major requirements are the same for all majors, who take foundational coursework in the literary, cultural, and embodied traditions of western and nonwestern performance as well as courses in the practices of acting, directing, design, dramaturgy, playwriting, and management and technical theatre. All majors then specialize in a specific area and undertake advanced thesis work, leading either to a formal essay of original research, or to an artistic project (in acting, design, directing, dramaturgy, playwriting, solo performance, or stage and production management) that combines the practices of research and artistic creation. Barnard and Columbia students receive their degrees from their respective colleges of Columbia University.
The Barnard College Department of Theatre mounts a full season of productions in the Minor Latham Playhouse and the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, a crucible of investigation that is a credit-bearing element of the curriculum, and open to all undergraduate students for audition. A collaboration between students and professional theatre artists, the Department of Theatre productions are both a learning process and a scene of encounter, where perceptions are shaped for the attention and creative reflection of a larger public.
For admissions information, please contact the Barnard or Columbia Admissions Office directly. The Department of Theatre does not handle admissions.
As a department, our mission is to engage imaginatively with the inheritance of the past, the questions of the present, and the possibilities of the future through embodied and intellectual inquiry into theatre and performance. Click here to read our departmental Mission Statement and our Statement of Anti-Racism in full.
Visit this page to learn about our Major Requirements, find the necessary forms to declare your major, and read advice aimed at incoming majors.