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| COURSES | DEPARTMENTS | DEGREES | EVENTS | FACULTY | |
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The Department of Theatre and Dance is committed to the creative and intellectual development of each student. The faculty places great emphasis on teaching and provides an environment in which students develop their personal visions. We work one-on-one with our students, discussing their ideas and helping them to identify and develop their particular strengths. Through our active and diverse production season we focus on the presentation of student work both in the Rodey Theatre (a 420 seat theatre) and in Theatre X (a 120 seat black box stage). Departmental outreach activities and special programs celebrate the cultural expression both of the Southwest region and Latin American countries.
The theatre program offers comprehensive curricula with emphases in actor training, directing, dramatic writing, theatre for youth, theatre history and criticism. The design for performance program offers students major technical and design roles for all productions while preparing them to design for theatre, dance, opera, concert, TV/Film, and emerging electronic media. At the masters level we offer emphases in directing, dramatic writing, and theatre education. Through ongoing classroom and production activities, the theatre and design programs prepare students for graduate work and for professional work in the wider world. Because the writer is often the catalyst in the creative process, a one-million dollar endowment, named after former department chair Robert Hartung, was created to support the activities of a dramatic writing program that includes a new M.F.A. degree expected to begin in 1999. This program and degree are being formed under the guidance of professor Digby Wolfe, the internationally known writer and co-creator of the television series, Laugh-In. Some of the elements of the dramatic writing program are comedy and short form writing and opportunities for staging original work.
We view the work of theatre and dance as providing a powerful perspective from which to understand ourselves and the world in its social and political dimensions. |
In addition to their teaching and creative work for the department, all of our faculty members maintain their involvement with the professional world as performers, choreographers, directors, designers, and scholars. Prominent guest teachers and artists regularly contribute their expertise to our programs. The theatre, dance and design programs are fully accredited by the National Association of Schools for Theatre and the National Association of Schools of Dance.
The dance program offers comprehensive curricula leading to the B.A. in Dance and the M.A. with emphases in choreography and dance history/criticism. An M.F.A. degree is expected to begin in 2000. The B.A. degree prepares students both for graduate work and for professional careers as performers, choreographers, teachers, and dance researchers. We are the only dance program in the United States with a fully developed curriculum in Flamenco Dance to complement our courses in ballet, modern, African, jazz, Spanish classical, renaissance and baroque, Mexican folk, and pueblo social dance. Each summer, the International Festival Flamenco brings Flamenco artists, teachers, and students from all over the world to UNM for workshops and performances.