Department Of Theatre At Vanderbilt University

Mission Statement:
We support the mission of the College of Arts and Science by serving as a vital site of innovative scholarship and teaching, as well as creative expression and humanistic exploration. Theatre uniquely approaches this humanistic journey by shaping perceptions about our lives into an active experience that allows for critical thought and discussion. Our department provides this important and unique aspect of a liberal arts education through its production season and curriculum. We use Neely Auditorium and our production season as practical extensions of that curriculum, a laboratory where students learn to form creative expressions as well as to evaluate and critique them.

Goals:

The Theatre Department has three main goals within a liberal arts curriculum:

1) To help the general student begin developing reasoned standards of criticism and to understand the intimate correlation between the theatre and the society which it reflects.

2) To provide our majors and minors with a more detailed and specialized study of the major components of theatrical endeavor and to provide the opportunity for practical application of that instruction on actual productions staged at the theatre.

3) To prepare students with professional aspirations as either teachers or artists for further post graduate training and/or education.