Drama and Theatre Arts

What Columbia University says about their program:

Drama and Theatre Arts is an undergraduate programme at Columbia University. The undergraduate theatre major is housed in the Barnard College Department of Theatre, and is offered to all undergraduate Barnard College, Columbia College, and General Studies students (the Columbia major is designated “Drama and Theatre Arts”). The major program engages the disciplines of drama, theatre, and performance studies as a distinctive mode of intellectual and artistic inquiry. While Barnard and Columbia students fulfill the overall graduation requirements at their respective institutions (the Core at Columbia, Foundations at Barnard), major requirements are the same for all majors, who take foundational coursework in the literary, cultural, and embodied traditions of western and non-Western performance as well as courses in the practices of acting, directing, design, dramaturgy, playwriting, and management and technical theatre. All majors then specialize in a specific area and undertake advanced thesis work, leading either to a formal essay of original research, or to an artistic project (in acting, design, directing, dramaturgy, playwriting, solo performance, or stage and production management) that combines the practices of research and artistic creation. Barnard and Columbia students receive their degrees from their respective colleges of Columbia University.

The Barnard College Department of Theatre mounts a full season of productions in the Minor Latham Playhouse and the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, a crucible of investigation that is a credit-bearing element of the curriculum, and open to all undergraduate students for audition. A collaboration between students and professional theatre artists, the Department of Theatre productions are both a learning process and a scene of encounter, where perceptions are shaped for the attention and creative reflection of a larger public.

Barnard students may declare the major at any time; Columbia students have a major-selection period in the second year, but all students must declare the major by the spring semester of the sophomore year. The major requirements are spelled out below, as is the process for choosing a thesis area: all Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts majors complete a thesis as a capstone to their work in the degree. For more information about the major, please contact the Theatre Department office.

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