(clockwise from the top right) Fall 2012 production of Cabaret, featuring Chris Bittner '13 as the Emcee with the Kit Kat Club performers; Spring 2012 production of Cloud 9; Members of the Wheaton College Dance Company performing Center of the Sun, from their spring 2012 show Sincerely; Fall 2011 production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, featuring Evan Shaw '13 as Romeo and Caroline Osborn '13 as Juliet.

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.