Theatre and Performance Studies

(770) 499-3123

The Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University supports the liberal arts mission of the University by engaging students as artists, scholars, and active citizens in their social worlds. Students learn through praxis, encountering performance as the intersection of rigorous critical investigation and practical, engaged, learning. Taking a uniquely holistic view of performance to include the realms of theatrical production, storytelling, dance, performance art, and everyday life, the department challenges students to recognize performance as a method of analysis, a mode of inquiry, and a creative and aesthetic act.

Our program offers a wide range of courses dedicated to developing students as scholar-artists, viewing both live performance as scholarship and writing as a creative act. The program provides opportunities for students to create, witness, and critique performances based on a variety of sources: from dramatic scripts to literary and folk traditions, original ethnographic field research, and personal narratives. Inherent within this premise lies an ardent commitment to provide global learning opportunities to students as vital to their individual and social growth. It is the department’s mission to push the discipline forward in integrating theatre, dance and performance studies approaches, offering for our campus and our community a broad spectrum of voices, cultures, texts, periods, and styles of performance experiences.

Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies

The Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies is fully accredited by NAST (the National Association of Schools of Theatre). Accreditation follows a rigorous evaluation process that includes self-study and peer review. The major provides student artists with a foundation in theatre as an historic, global, and aesthetic form, through the study of a variety of performance texts and styles, from classical and modern drama to musical theatre, folk and literary narratives, performance art, and classical and contemporary poetry. Emphasizing the interrelationship between theory and praxis, the major prepares students for entry into the profession or for graduate study in theatre or other related fields. The Department of Theatre, Performance Studies, and Dance offers a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies, with concentrations in acting, performance studies, musical theatre and design/technology.

Admission Requirements

High school GPA requirement of 2.5 or higher for entering first-year freshmen. College GPA requirement of 3.0 or higher for entering transfers and currently-enrolled KSU students seeking a change in major.