The interdisciplinary focus of the University is an ideal setting for the highly collaborative study and practice of theatre. Many of our productions involve collaborations with University academic programs and student or community organizations.
Theatre faculty members at UW-Green Bay believe that the best way to learn theatre is to create theatre. Students are encouraged to participate in the five mainstage (faculty or guest artist directed and designed) productions each year. Studio (student directed and designed) productions provide additional opportunities for involvement. University Theatre production work is open to all students and practicum credit is available for work on mainstage productions. The Theatre program is an active participant in the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival, a national organization in support of excellence in university theatre.
Our facilities in Theatre Hall include the 450-seat proscenium University Theatre, Theatre 110 - Experimental Theatre & design studio, acting/ rehearsal studio, dance studio with a new sprung floor, a CAD & Sound Design lab with plotter, and well equipped scene and costume shops. Two of our Mainstage productions each year are performed in our 90-seat Jean Weidner Theatre in The Weidner Center for the Performing Arts. We periodically produce musicals and theatre for young audiences in the 2,000-seat Cofrin Family Hall of the Weidner Center.
Students receive training from working professionals and guest artists in a welcoming environment with small class sizes that assure personal attention. Opportunities afforded by the Weidner Center on campus include master classes, discounted tickets, and internship and work opportunities. Alternate Theatre, the student theatre organization, sponsors free workshops and affordable trips to regional theatres. Scholarships for incoming and returning Theatre and Dance students require application and audition or interview.
UW-Green Bay Theatre graduates pursue jobs in the entertainment industry and related fields. Students benefit greatly from internship opportunities prior to graduation and advanced course work in audition and portfolio preparation prepares them for the competitive challenges ahead.
UW-Green Bay Theatre & Dance Mission
The UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance program is a community of professional artists, educators and students that provides professional training in the related performing arts of Theatre, Dance and Design in the context of a broad, liberal arts education. Our program offers high impact learning practices that cultivate creativity, critical thinking, communication skills, and collaboration within and outside the program and delivers a rigorous academic and problem focused environment that seeks to produce work that challenges the mind, engages the heart and delights the senses.
Core Values
Collaboration
Working together, we value the contribution of the individual to the collective vision of the team and strive for a cooperative and collegial realization of our artistic goals.
Professional Practice
We seek excellence in all our endeavors, training students to take their place as professionals. Faculty strives to remain up to date on current technologies and practices.
Community
We work to create engaging partnerships with our community, providing support and exchanging ideas as well as information, with our colleagues, our audience and the world at large. Students are taught to see the value of becoming engaged members of their community.
Diversity
Works written by and about persons of all abilities and communities, including BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other members of historically and currently marginalized communities that are under-represented or misrepresented, are studied and staged. Traditional and non-traditional UWGB students from any major or discipline are encouraged to participate in productions.
Discovery
As an art form, theatre seeks to explore and comprehend the human condition. We encourage and support creativity, curiosity, intellectual and aesthetic development, invention and innovation in the pursuit of understanding.
Academic and Creative Freedom
We believe that freedom of inquiry is essential to academic and creative pursuits and our program supports intellectual and creative activities without restriction.
Student Opportunities
In all areas of emphasis, we strive to provide all students with opportunities to experience live theatre and to put classroom learning into practical application.
Working Alumni
The application of theory and skills are core values held by the UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance Program. Graduates of our program apply their training to careers in live performance, entertainment technology, film, television, education, arts management, scholarship, and business. UW Green Bay Theatre and Dance graduates have successfully found work with organizations that include - Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Lookingglass Theatre, 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Alley Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Cirque du Soleil, Peninsula Players Theatre, Door Shakespeare and Dreamworks. Our graduates are on Broadway, in national and international production and concert tours, and educational institutions around the country, providing a far-reaching network of industry professionals. UW Green Bay Theatre and Dance graduates have also had great success in creative entrepreneurship, taking their talents in new directions.
