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True Excellence   True Experience   True Innovation!
As one of the largest and most active departments in the region, the Theatre and Dance Department at Missouri State University offers a thorough and dynamic undergraduate training experience. Our faculty and staff are working professionals who bring their talent, skills and experience into the classroom. You may choose from instruction and production opportunities in performance, design/technology, dance and musical theatre. Our curriculum encompasses pre-professional training, a secondary school teaching certification in speech and theatre, and a wide reaching general major. We want you to enrich our experience by bringing us your spirit, your sense of play, and your love of the theatre and dance. Throughout your stay, it will be our objective to nurture those impulses which originally attracted you to the art form, and to deepen your joy and personal satisfaction.

The Department of Theatre and Dance supports the mission of the University and the College of Arts and Letters by providing a solid conceptual and practical foundation for our majors which enables them to master at least one disciplinary area of theatre or dance studies while cultivating a broad appreciation for the liberal arts, an ability to think critically, and a sense of the historic and aesthetic values which have traditionally informed the study of theatre and dance.

The department trains students for advanced study or professional work through its Bachelor of Fine Arts programs, offers a program of performance studies combined with a liberal arts education in the Bachelor of Arts degree, prepares students to pursue careers in secondary education through the Bachelor of Science in Education program, and enables Masters students to prepare for advanced graduate studies in theatre or to enhance their careers as high school drama teachers.

Each of these degree programs provides students with practical tools as well as research, writing, and problem solving skills that will be needed whether they choose to become scholars, teachers, or artists. In addition, the department recognizes and supports the interrelationship between classroom activities and laboratory productions.  To this end, the department integrates intellectual and academic study with active participation in a variety of production experiences.

THEATRE AND DANCE MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Missouri State University is to educate and provide professional training to students in the fields of theatre and dance.

The department provides both a broad theoretical, historical, and cultural framework for the study of theatre and dance and specialized training that prepares our undergraduate and graduate students to attain additional advanced academic degrees, to teach theatre at the secondary level, or to pursue a variety of professional careers in theatre and dance.

Understanding that our students learn to think critically and reason most clearly when they put theory into practice through repeated performance, the department stages a rotating schedule of plays and dance concerts each year that enrich not only the educational experience of our majors, but the life of the University and the greater Springfield community. In addition to these performance opportunities, the department sponsors Tent Theatre, a professional summer stock theatre originally established in 1963, and supports four student performance troupes which serve area schools and civic organizations through regular performances.

In all of these ways, the department endeavors to develop educated persons who possess a broad range of viewpoints, who strive for excellence, who have achieved expressive and intellectual competence, who appreciate and practice collaboration, who embrace service to the broader community, who are life-long learners dedicated to exploring the role of theatre and dance in an ever-changing world, and who will be professionally competitive as they pursue meaningful careers in theatre and dance.



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