Laurea in Teatro - Percorso Studi Generali

Why Study Theatre?

Whether you're ready to take the stage or build it, you'll find your place in theatre at Aquinas. With a leading-edge facility and the addition of a new theatre department director, our program is setting a new standard of excellence.

In 2003, the $7-million Aquinas College Performing Arts Center (in collaboration with Aquinas College, Community Circle Theatre and Grand Rapids Catholic Secondary Schools) had its Grand Opening Season. It's a cooperative effect that brings extraordinary theatre to our community and our students.

How We're Different

Aquinas is the only four-year private school in the Grand Rapids area that offers a theatre major. The program is part of a unique collaboration with Circle Theatre and the League of Catholic High Schools, the only one of its kind in the nation, allowing for a variety of performance, teaching, and technical training opportunities. The department produces four to five fully-mounted shows a year, with a focus on contemporary plays, musicals, and adaptations. The department offers three different 21-credit concentrations (performance, technical, and general) in addition to a 27-credit core. Aquinas offers up to four talent scholarships for incoming freshmen and transfers, based on audition (for performers) or portfolio (for designers, stage managers, and directors). Students have had internships at all of the major theatres in the Grand Rapids as well as at The Purple Rose in Chelsea and in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Students leave with more acting and design credits than majors from other colleges because they have access to unparalleled opportunities for building their resumes from arrival on campus, rather than waiting years to see stage time or shadow designers. In recent years, a wide roster of visiting playwrights and designers from around the nation have spent time on campus, giving students exposure to the development and production of new work and creating networking connections. The department has toured children’s productions to local underserved schools with shows like Rising Sun Rising Moon, Brave Little, Tailor, The Troll and the Elephant Prince, and the Operation: Play! program, which dramatizes stories written by local elementary school children Students are individually coached in their futures after graduation, learning how to market their skills not only in professional theatre, but as rare and marketable skills required for alternative career paths.

Major Requirements

Forty-eight (48) credit hours in Theatre: the core (27 credits) and one concentration or “track” (21 credits) selected from the following options: performance (acting and/or directing), technical studies, creative dramatics or general studies.

Theatre Major core required courses:

• TE/EH217 Dramatic Literature
• TE242 Script Analysis
• TE361 Theatre History I
• TE362 Theatre History II
• TE141 Acting I
• TE251 Stagecraft
• TE244 Directing I
• TE399 Senior Capstone Project/Independent Study
• Five (5) credits of Theatre Practica (TE253 and TE341) at least one credit in each area, counts for mainstage production and the Children's tour only

General Studies Track Requirements

Required courses:

• TE130 Intro to Theatre Design
• TE241 Acting II
• TE278 Dance Sampler
• TE 352 Script Writing
• Nine (9) credits of theatre electives.

The close-knit educational environment at Aquinas develops students who thrive in all dimensions of life. Learn more, in our students' words about the Aquinas experience and the Dominican pillars of prayer, study, service, and community.

The Dominican tradition is two-fold: contemplative and communal. At Aquinas, we are committed to gathering for liturgical prayer nourished by God's Word and the Spirit. Prayer leads us into the deeper Truth needed to live out God's call for us in the world. We commit ourselves to a love of learning, both formal and informal. This necessitates an openness to learn from the most unlikely sources as well as tried and true scholarship. Aquinas encourages students to engage in service projects and service-learning programs. It also offers preparation for careers that will enable graduates to spread the truths that they have learned - "to make a difference in the world."