Join us for the fall 2026 installment of the bi-annual Five Minute Play Festival. These student written, directed and performed pieces start with a prompt on Monday and get performed a short 4 days later.

Free tickets are available via the Watson Box Office.

New Affiliated Instructor in Voice, Randy McGee, presents his first faculty recital at Wheaton. He will perform a selection of popular-style music that has sentimental meaning to him and that he hopes will resonate with the audience. Randy’s performance is accompanied and produced by Jane Ring Frank and the performance includes guest performances by Wheaton students Mallory Canning ’28 and Carolyn Stevenson ’27.

Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of Performance Studies & Theatre at Northwestern University and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology — he joins us to present Imagination as a Form of Study, a performance and reading that moves through questions of gardening, the feeling of liquidity in motion, and the afro-future of teaching Black dance forms.

Dance and movement sit at the center of Professor DeFrantz’s scholarship and artistry. For Professor DeFrantz, dance is never just performance; it is a way of thinking, remembering, and passing down culture, a practice where the body holds knowledge that words alone cannot carry. His visit offers the Wheaton community, a chance to engage with a scholar-artist who reminds us that moving together is also a way of studying together, and that imagination itself can be a discipline we practice with our whole bodies. He brings to Wheaton a vision rooted in our shared capacity to do better, inviting us all to engage our creative spirit toward a collective good that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, proto-feminist, and queer-affirming.

Free tickets can be reserved via the Watson Box Office.

they never asked
suspicious or not –
just put us away

By Sen Taro, a poet incarcerated by the U.S. Wartime Civil Control Administration in the 1940s

The exhibition they never asked examines systemic, racialized U.S. immigration enforcement and confinement, showing how creative expression and documentation can counter forced erasure. Tracing over 200 years of policy, the show features the artwork of Wheaton alumna Momo Nagano, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, an American concentration camp, during World War II, alongside Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh’s archival project the Index of the Disappeared. Local and historical resources include Mapping Deportations, a data visualization history project and book on Rhode Island detention created by Honora Spicer and Giancarlo Huapaya with the AMOR network.

The exhibition will be on display September 10–November 14, 2026.

Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 1–5 p.m., Thursday 1–8 p.m..

Join us for the opening reception of our first gallery exhibition of the academic year, they never asked. This exhibition examines systemic, racialized U.S. immigration enforcement and confinement, showing how creative expression and documentation can counter forced erasure. Tracing over 200 years of policy, the show features the artwork of Wheaton alumna Momo Nagano, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, an American concentration camp, during World War II, alongside Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh’s archival project the Index of the Disappeared. Local and historical resources include Mapping Deportations, a data visualization history project and book on Rhode Island detention created by Honora Spicer and Giancarlo Huapaya with the AMOR network.

The exhibition will be on display September 10–November 14, 2026. The galleries are open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 1–5 p.m., and Thursdays 1–8 p.m..

Seniors, parents and alumni are invited to join Arts@Wheaton and the Friends of Art to celebrate the class of 2026. Inside Watson, the Senior Design Capstone projects will be on display in the Haas Concourse & Lobby and the Galleries will be open to view the Senior Visual Art Exhibition, Taking Up Space. Light refreshments will be served.

Rain location: Haas Concourse & Lobby, Watson Fine Arts

Wheaton students studying voice and various instruments showcase their skill performing work from their studies this semester.

Students participating in the senior seminar in theatre present their original capstone performance. This year’s project is supported by Playwright-in-Residence & Professor of English Charlotte Meehan.

Pay-what-you-can tickets are available via the Watson Box Office.

Join the Film, Media & Communications Department for their spring 2026 student film screening. Student work from the following courses will be shown:  Production I, Animation I, Cinematography, Video Art, Stop Motion Animation, Digital Editing, Media Workshop, and FNMS senior seminar.

The design capstone is a chance for senior design majors to apply their knowledge and skills to a topic of their choice. Posters show and explain what students investigated and why, the steps they took to add depth to their understanding and how they responded with design concepts through sketches, diagrams, prototypes and mockups.

Projects will be on display May 5–May 16, 2026