Theater & Music Theater

Welcome to Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater! We invite all students to participate in the creation, study, and performance of theater and music theater, with or without previous experience. We approach theater as an intensely collaborative art form, a key component of world cultures, and an entertainment genre that shapes and is shaped by history, politics, context, musical forms, and technology. We believe that the study of theater cultivates the exploration and integration of the body, the mind, and lived experience. Our program emphasizes the future of theater through fostering the creation of original work by students and working with innovative professional artists.

We offer over twenty courses each year including writing, performance, directing, music directing, design, community engaged theater, dramaturgy, performance history, performance theory, and criticism. For students interested in pursuing a minor, we offer four suggested pathways through our curriculum: Theater Maker, Music Theater, Performance Studies, and Community Engaged Theater. We also offer skill-based co-curricular classes and workshops in performance, creation, music, design, and technology open to all. We sponsor trips to New York, Philadelphia, New Brunswick, and Trenton to see a wide range of performances, visit archives, and meet artists and scholars, in addition to partnering with the McCarter Theatre on the Princeton campus. Princeton students participate in multiple student-run theater companies on campus, explore a wide range of theatrical research opportunities, training and internships in the summers, and can study theater and music theater abroad, including at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

We build community inside and outside of the University through our expansive student-initiated season of theatrical explorations, through our Princeton Playhouse Choir and Ensemble, through our partnership with Trenton Youth Theater, and through our relationships with the McCarter Theatre, Passage Theater, the Public Works program and other off-campus organizations. We also sustain community through ongoing relationships with alumni and with theatrical professionals and scholars. Most of the projects in our wide-ranging season of theatrical explorations emerge from proposals by students working towards the minor; all students at Princeton are invited to participate in theater making on and offstage, with or without previous experience.

Learn more about Program in Theater & Music Theater faculty, news, events, & courses.