a play featuring a black family and white family seated around a table
A scene from the popular play, ‘‘What We Look Like,’’ performed by theater students presents the life of an African American family caught between their cultural values and the white suburbs in which they live. Photo credit: John Seyfried
College of Arts and Sciences

Theater

Program Type:
  • Major
  • Minor
  • Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Theater offers students opportunities to study acting, directing, design and production, theater history and criticism, and playwriting within the broader context of a liberal arts education. Students engage in all aspects of performance, both artistic and technical.

Program Director

Caroline Jackson Smith

Professor of Theater and Africana Studies
Department Affiliation
Theater
Contact

Kathleen Drennan

Administrative Assistant 440-775-8152

Why Study Theater at Oberlin?

4
Performance Venues
10
Productions per year
10
Study Away Programs

Oberlin Student Theater Association

The Oberlin Student Theater Association (OSTA) is entirely student-run theater. OSTA produces five fully staged shows a year, sponsors playwriting workshops, and holds staged readings. The group hosts a 24-hour theater competition twice a year, which challenges students to create and stage new pieces in one day.

Oberlin Musical Theater Association

The student-run Oberlin Musical Theater Association (OMTA) coordinates, finances, promotes, and produces student alternative musical theater, as well as workshops and works-in-progress. OMTA presents a weeklong show each semester and for a week after winter term. Past shows include Assassins and Godspell.

Upcoming Theater Events

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Sample Courses

  • THEA 100 - Acting 1: Fundamentals 4 credits
  • THEA 260 - Lighting Design 4 credits
  • THEA 319H - Acting & Directing for Camera 2 credits
  • THEA 333 - From Stage to Screen 4 credits
View course catalog for requirements

Theater Faculty

Theater faculty are accomplished professionals in their own right. They teach a range of courses that nurture the natural and developing abilities of students, thus providing a sound liberal arts grounding in theory and practice of theater. Faculty support student-directed work and actively mentor them throughout their academic progress.

Explore Faculty within Theater

“The artistic landscape of Oberlin College is vibrant, diverse, and exciting. All of our departments—dance, cinema studies, art, and creative writing as well as theater open the door for students to explore multidisciplinary arts projects, often working with each other and students from the Conservatory of Music.In our classes and productions, students are drawn from across the college.”

Caroline Jackson Smith, Professor of Theater and Africana Studies
See Profile

Theater Faculty

Theater News

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