* Double major
Dear Future Bronco,
If you are reading this, you’ve been doing a deep dive into our program and finding out as much as you can from our website. Chances are, you have been involved in the Performing Arts for a while and you wonder if it might be a viable choice to study Theatre and Dance in college. If you are looking at Santa Clara, you are also a person who knows that a well-rounded Liberal Arts curriculum can prepare you for the future in a way that a conservatory cannot. You want to explore all your options. The Theatre and Dance program at Santa Clara University is ready to help you do that.
Santa Clara University, the Jesuit university in Northern California, is designed to educate the whole person. The Arts are an integral part of that mission. In the Department of Theatre and Dance, part of our mission is to “...develop competence, cultivate conscience, and inspire compassion” in our artists. As you study the wide array of technique and literature classes in our curriculum, you will become exposed to and experienced in a number of different disciplines within the fields of Theatre and Dance. You might consider yourself an actor right now, and while you are with us, you might also find yourself a very strong writer or director or choreographer or designer…hidden talents you didn’t even know you had will come to light!
Because of this well-rounded education, complimented, perhaps, by a double major in a completely different field, you may find yourself uniquely positioned in the world to rise to the top of every employer’s consideration. Theatre and Dance majors and minors leave Santa Clara with technical skills that make them very “in-demand” in the world of our art, but also in the world at large. Transferable skills in leadership, communication, problem-solving, design thinking, and meeting deadlines under pressure are the top skills in demand in any other profession, and you will have four years of cultivating those skills in the Department of Theatre and Dance, doing something you love!
“But what can I do with a Theatre Arts degree?”
This is a very real question and, not to sound trite, but you can do anything you want or can imagine yourself doing! Do you want to work in business? We have alumni doing that. Do you want to be a lawyer? We have a ton of lawyers! Do you want to travel the world and write a travel blog?...that would be SO COOL. Do that! I don’t think we have anyone doing that yet!
The point is, our alumni are doing it all. We have many folks working as:
- Performers on Broadway/National Tours/Cruise Ships
- Teachers
- Directors/Choreographers
- Designers
- Doctors/Dentists
- Lawyers
- Financial Analysts
- Corporate Trainers
- Marketing Executives
- Company Founders
- High Tech Employees, and everything else you can imagine!
The curriculum at Santa Clara University will make you competitive for any post-graduate programs you seek. Our alumni have earned advanced degrees at all of the highest ranking graduate programs, including including The Actor’s Studio School of Drama, Pace University; Tisch School of the Arts, NYU; Boston Conservatory at Berklee; Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine; and Yale School of Drama. In short, Santa Clara University and the Department of Theatre and Dance is a great place to prepare yourself to “invent the life you want to lead”. Keep visiting our website, check out our Faculty pages, Google us, and ask our current and former students about what makes an education at Santa Clara University special. I would also be happy to meet you, talk to you and show you around the space if you are ever in town. Please feel free to contact me with any questions via my email: kihill@scu.edu. Good luck on all your applications, and we hope to see you on campus soon!
Kimberly Mohne Hill
Chair, SCU Department of Theatre and Dance