Theater

The theater major at Transylvania encourages experience-based class work and participation in productions in our highly flexible and well-equipped Lucille C. Little Theater, even for students who don’t pursue a theater degree.

We offer beginning and advanced courses in acting, directing, technical theater and design, costume design and construction, theater history and dramatic literature and playwriting. In all our courses, we emphasize both theory and practice and offer students hands-on training through acting, constructing scenery and props, building costumes, writing plays, directing and attending plays in production.

Transylvania University Theater stages two to three major productions each year, representing a wide range of theatrical styles and literary genres, in addition to a number of student-directed plays. Recent productions include “Beware Wolf and Other Nightmares” “She Kills Monsters,” “Dying City” and “Lawrence Booth’s Books of Visions,” adapted from professor Maurice Manning’s award-winning book of poems. Casting is open to all Transylvania students with no pre-casting, putting first-year students on an equal plane with other students.

The Transy Theater Mentorship Program allows students to assume major responsibilities—directing, stage management, producing and costuming, set and lighting design—while working in a supportive environment with highly individualized faculty guidance. This is a rare opportunity for students to put into practice ideas and skills that they have studied, focus on an area of special interest and collaborate with other students and faculty on creative production.

Where Our Graduates Have Worked

  • Arkansas Children’s Theatre
  • Artistic director, Pandora’s Box Productions
  • Artistic director, Electricity Project
  • Assistant director, Folger Shakespeare Library
  • Development, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
  • Director, Source Theater, Washington, D.C.
  • Disney Entertainment
  • Lexington Ballet
  • Technical director, Downtown Arts Center, Lexington

Internships Our Students Have Completed

  • New York Stage and Film
  • Commonwealth Theatre Company
  • SITI Company Workshop in Saratoga Springs
  • Woodford Theater
  • Athens West Theatre

Courses of Special Interest

  • Advanced Design: Lighting
  • Building a Character
  • Costume Design and Construction
  • Imagining the Production
  • Modern Drama and Theater
  • Fundamentals of Play Directing
  • Special Topics: Laughing Matters
  • Spectator as a Critic
  • Theatrical Creatures

Where Our Graduates Have Studied

  • Atlantic Theater Company
  • Auburn University
  • Florida State University
  • Savannah College of Art and Design
  • Lexington Children’s Theater
  • The New School
  • University of Louisville
  • University of Miami
  • University of Pittsburgh

Opportunities in the Major

  • Actor in productions
  • Designer
  • Director
  • Playwright
  • Stage Manager
  • Technical crew member

Semester Study Abroad Opportunities

  • Australia I
  • Australia II
  • England I
  • Greece
  • Ireland
  • New Zealand
  • Scotland

These GlobalTransy programs have at least two courses related to the major.

Interested in studying abroad for a summer? Take a look at our summer study abroad opportunities.

Contacts

Tosha Fowler, Chair of Theater; Director of Theater Program

Phone: 233-8514
Office: Mitchell Fine Arts 107

Address:
Transylvania University 
300 North Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508-1797

More Information