THE PERFORMING ARTS DEPARTMENT OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY believes that the study and practice of the performing arts should play a central role in education. Theatre, dance, and film are humane, indeed “liberal” arts. These arts benefit from their inclusion in a liberal arts university, as the university itself profits from including them. The diverse historical and cultural perspectives provided by the liberal arts curriculum illuminate department majors’ understanding of their developing crafts, and make them better artists. At the same time, non-majors and the university community at large have much to learn from theatre, dance, and film. For these are truly interdisciplinary arts, touching architecture, music, painting, history, literature, psychology, anthropology, and technology, so that the performing arts provide revealing windows for the historical, contemporary, and international study of culture. In the intellectual study and practical performance of theatre, dance, and film, we cultivate several aspects of human endeavor.

(1) Liberal Inquiry: Our three artistic mediums are social, collaborative, and multi-perspectival; like the university itself, they provide a civilized arena for the expression and understanding of diverse points of view.

(2) Rhetorical Expression: We train our students to persuade in both oral and written mediums, and on both cognitive and emotional levels. Classes in acting, voice and speech, public speaking, and auditioning cultivate oral skills. Training in playwriting and screenwriting as well as the critical analysis of theatre, film, and dance develop proficiency in writing.

(3) Creative Invention: Our department engenders creative opportunities for designers, actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, filmmakers, video producers, and creative writers. Invention is inspired by the historical and international perspectives cultivated in the liberal arts university, and we strive to send into the world artists of learning, eloquence, and tolerance.

(4) Technological Expertise: We provide technological education for our students sufficient for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Students hone technical skills in lighting, scene-building, costuming, camera work, and production and editing for film and video.

(5) Movement Fluency: Movement and dance courses provide training in techniques which generate fluent physical expression on stage or before the camera. Even more broadly, students of movement, dance, and film learn to interpret and create moving images, thus enhancing their confidence and expressive capacities in both everyday and future career situations.

We strive, then, to educate mind, heart, and body, in a collaborative community that moves between the classroom and the stage, the latter a living laboratory where theories and techniques are held to critical scrutiny and performed for the university audience.