As a touring Production Stage Manager, it is imperative to quickly foster a sense of community between the creative and design team, performers, musicians, and technicians in order to set up the theater production process for success as we travel through different states and countries. Goshen College’s encouragement in community outreach, both globally and locally, have assisted in my ability to communicate and work with people from all areas and bring them together to make memorable performances. I’m grateful for my opportunities to travel around the world, meet new people, and share important stories.
Bachelor of Arts
(Staging) Theater
Major
Create Performances with Purpose
You make theater here from day one, and you make it matter.
Goshen College’s Theater program trains you in acting, directing, design, stage management, and dramaturgy through full-scale productions. You gain hands-on experience from your very first semester.
The work centers on stories that center questions of justice, identity, and community. Through main stage productions, student-directed shows, and interdisciplinary projects, you build artistic and leadership skills that serve you on stage and beyond.
A Place You Can Belong, Fully
You can belong here as your whole self. Theater at Goshen is a collaborative community where your faith, your identity, and your voice come with you into the rehearsal room rather than getting left at the door. Students who arrive from across the country and around the world find their people fast, in casts, crews, and the scene shop.
The work continues after commencement. Every Theater graduate since 2022 is working in live performance, at least part time, on stages in major cities and smaller towns, at universities, and on national tours. Our graduates build careers as freelance professional actors, technicians, and theater educators, putting the craft they honed at Goshen to work in real productions and classrooms.
Theater Beyond the Stage
Each January, Goshen College Theater students join the department’s group at the , a multi-day gathering of undergraduate theater programs where students share their work, compete, network, and learn alongside working professionals.
The Theater Department supports student registration and transportation, keeping the cost of attending low.
Recent Goshen participants have advanced to the finals or semifinals of the Irene Ryan Scholarship Auditions, ACTF’s national acting competition, in four of the past five years. In addition, Eddie Baldwin 26′ was one of five students nationwide to receive the McGraw Hill Recognition in Design and Technology award.
What You’ll Study
The theater program follows a flexible curriculum built around both your specialty and your range. Core courses include Acting, Design and Production, Directing, Senior Theater Seminar, Stagecraft, and Theater History. You work closely with faculty mentors and finish with a senior project shaped to your own interests.
You can combine theater with communication, education, English, or music, tailoring the degree to where you want to go. View the complete program requirements in our catalog.
Gloria Bontrager-Thomas '22
Production Stage Manager at THE WIZ North American Tour
What It Costs, and the Aid Behind It
Talented students involved in theater can earn performance-based theater scholarships at Goshen College, awarded by audition or portfolio submission and open to you regardless of your major. Those stack with academic scholarships and need-based aid.
To see your own price after aid, run the net price calculator and talk with a real person in the financial aid office.
Common Questions About the Theater Major
Theater graduates work in acting, arts administration, directing, dramaturgy, scenic or costume design, stage management, theater education, and community arts. At Goshen College, 93% of graduates are employed, in graduate school, or in service within a year. Alumni work in professional theater companies, public schools, graduate programs, and arts nonprofits across the country.
Core courses include Acting, Design and Production, Directing, Senior Theater Seminar, Stagecraft, and Theater History, capped by a senior project tailored to your interests. The curriculum is flexible and combinable with music, education, communication, or English, so you can shape it around your own goals.
Yes. Theater at Goshen is collaborative from your first semester, with mainstage productions, student-directed shows, and the Arts in London course that take you out into the world. On a small, values-centered campus in Goshen, Indiana, students who arrive from across the globe find people quickly in the rehearsal room and the scene shop.
You train and perform in the Umble Center, a 350+-seat auditorium with a proscenium/thrust hybrid stage, a full lighting and sound system, scene shop, and costume shop, and storage facilities.
Amy Budd
Associate Professor of Theater
