About the Theatre Department

Mission Statement

We believe our theatre program for majors is the ultimate liberal arts/active learning experience. Theatre embraces every major system of thought and humanist concern, both as theory and in practice. An actor not only studies the great ideas, he or she must inhabit them. A director or designer cannot merely be familiar with facts of history or cultural forces, he or she must recreate them. Though we do not lack the resources or ambition, our program does not offer a conservatory or undergraduate professional training experience. Our faculty strongly believes that theatre is best engaged as a whole and living art, immediate and vital to the spirit of liberal arts education and the realities of a fluid, changeable world.

The key to our program's vitality and success is surely flexibility. Our students are not specialists; they are not encouraged to stake their futures on a single talent or skill. They are prepared for life and careers of changing conditions and challenges. Our students are characteristically independent both in mind and in their work; they know how to maintain self-discipline and focus even as circumstances alter or the best plans fail. This program emphasizes generalist study and collaboration as it cultivates each individual's talents, temperaments and potential.

Long Term Career Options for Graduates

Our program enforces broad-based learning and practical applications of the liberal arts core curriculum. Students must perform, design, construct, direct, assist . . . COLLABORATE. In every area of study and practical training we demand research, independent analysis, critical thinking and a high degree of on-the-spot problem-solving. Our students are well prepared for graduate study in theatre and/or closely related fields (literature, journalism, communications/media, anthropology, psychology - especially if they have taken double majors or minored in one of these) as they are required to study theoretical and historical impulses from acting to costuming, from drama to the theatre structures and audience/cultural formations.

For the multiple-career future, theatre majors have more options than most majors because they have been trained to seek those options out and take advantage of sudden reversals; their study has been intensively people-oriented; their imaginations have been exercised - especially in terms of working with what "is" in order to make what "might be." Theatre students tend to be unusually well-developed in these seven traits, invaluable to almost every employer in the world of business:

• communication skills (salesmanship, leadership, presentation)
• creative problem-solving (how to do more with less)
• motivation (independent responsibility for the "why" of work)
• collaboration (knowing how to engage a team)
• time-budgeting (respect for absolute deadlines, momentum)
• respect for authority (reliability, loyalty to structure)
• adaptability (troubleshooting, improvisation, quick learning)

In addition to several graduates who are currently in graduate theatre programs (about 35% and on the increase) or who are working in professional/commercial theatre (35-45%), Truman theatre graduates have gone on to professional training in education, medicine, theology, literature, and law. We have graduates who are successful in carpentry, electrical maintenance, sales, marketing, small-business management, personnel consulting, and publications. None of our recent graduates (of the past six years) is currently unemployed.