Theatre Performance

Are you drawn to the stage, creating memorable characters and telling stories that matter? Then the Performance track of the Theatre major may be for you. You’ll start acting in your first semester. Voice, movement, and acting classes build on each other, taking you from foundational technique to advanced work in scene study, voice and speech, and movement. You can deepen your performance training through specialized topics courses, or branch into dance, filmmaking, and related areas for engaging audiences.

Beyond learning how to act, solely, you'll be discovering all the facets of how a theatre production or project comes together. You'll study directing, build sets and costumes in our shops, work on crews for mainstage productions, and learn about film alongside theatre. Internships, study abroad, and courses in arts management round out your preparation. Graduates of the Theatre Performance track leave knowing how to work with directors, designers, and crews, with the abilities and collaborative experience that theatre companies, film productions, and other employers in arts and entertainment look for.

Learn more about Theatre Performance

A close community at a big school

We're a close-knit theatre program in a huge university; this will give you the best of both worlds. Your professors will know you by name and provide you with real hands-on time in our shops and on our productions, not just a seat in the back of a big lecture hall. At the same time, Virginia Tech's size opens doors to professional opportunities that small arts schools can't. Theatre students do undergraduate research, work on transdisciplinary projects with students in engineering, architecture, and creative technologies, and build double majors that pair design with fashion, computer science with theatre technology, business with arts leadership, or anything else that interests them. If you want to double major, we'll help you make it happen.

Our faculty are working designers and technicians who will guide you in the design studio, coach you as you build your portfolio, and advocate for you in the working world well after graduation. As history has taught us in the Theatre program, the people you share the shop and the production table with could become the partners you collaborate with for years to come.

WHY VIRGINIA TECH?

Virginia Tech's Theatre Program is a creative home built on collaboration, community, and hands-on training.

Here, you're part of an ensemble of actors, directors, designers, technicians, managers, and community-builders who support each other’s growth and live out Virginia Tech's motto Ut Prosim (“That I May Serve”) every day.

From your first semester, you'll learn by doing in your courses, rehearsals, shops, and performances. Add the flexibility to double major in theatre and other programs at VT, and you'll build a skill set that creates opportunities across the arts and entertainment world, in commercial and nonprofit settings alike. Think professional theatre, film and television, live events, arts administration, community-based organizations, entrepreneurial endeavors, or whatever your VT education enables you to imagine.

You’re a performer. Take creative risks, hone your craft, and graduate ready for a career onstage, backstage, and beyond.

Where we create