Theatre and Dance Studies
(clockwise from the top right) Members of the Wheaton College Dance Company performing Hallelujah, from their fall 2008 show Body Language;Fall 2007 production of A Chorus Line, featuring Sam VonEhren '10 as Richie and "the line"; Spring 2009 production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, featuring Zach LeClair '08 as Macbeth and Emily Karelitz '10 as Lady Macbeth.
Theatre and Dance at Wheaton
The Department of Theatre and Dance Studies offers students a wide array of courses in acting, directing, theatre design and history, dance, dramatic literature, playwriting and film theory. Central to the department's mission are the development of communication skills—both oral and written—careful attention to how theatre and dance function as collaborative art forms, and an emphasis on theatre and dance as windows to diverse cultures, lifestyles and intellectual perspectives.
The Watson Fine Arts Center contains two performance spaces: the Dorothy Littlefield Weber '38 Theatre, a 350-seat proscenium house with a modular thrust, and the Kresge Experimental Theatre, a "black box" with flexible seating that can accommodate up to 120 spectators. Productions in these theatres, directed by both faculty and students and numbering an average of eight per year, cover a lot of territory: everything from semi-annual Dance Concerts and New Plays Festival to ancient Greek tragedy, modern realism, Shakespeare, farce, Beckett, musicals, and Moliere.
