Department of Drama students have the opportunity to attend—and participate in—120 to 160 artistically and educationally challenging productions throughout their four years of study. These include department main stage and Syracuse Stage productions, including the annual holiday co-production with Syracuse Stage.
Department Productions
Department productions are where the unparalleled experience of combining all of the theater arts—playwriting, design, direction, acting, stage management and technical creation—are brought together in one place at one time to be realized as a completed work of art. It is through this real-world experience that our students come to understand their art through practice.
While students learn the appropriate principles and practices in the classroom, in production they face the necessity, the challenge and the incredible opportunity of turning practice into product. That product and your part in it will be enjoyed and judged by your peers, your teachers, an audience and the same critics who comment on professional productions. Through this constant critique of your work, you quickly learn to separate the helpful feedback from the uninformed or malicious, thereby growing your own capacity of discrimination for your own work and that of others.
Trisha Jeffrey and musical theater major Madison Manning '26 in the Syracuse Stage/Department of Drama holiday co-production "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella."
In faculty productions, student actors and designers work closely in collaboration with professional directors and designers who are also their teachers. In studio productions, students act as the directors and designers of record and are mentored and advised by teachers but not controlled by them. In the process of becoming autonomous artists, they collaborate with fellow students, some of whom they will bond artistically with for life.
Drama students are fortunate to enjoy the presence of Syracuse Stage in the complex. Not only are you able to attend one or many performances of every play, but upper-level acting and musical theater students are also permitted to perform in appropriate roles and to understudy the professional actors. (Syracuse Stage and the Department of Drama have successfully collaborated on productions that, under a University Resident Theatre Association contract, several department students are cast in leading and supporting roles and receive professional credit for the run of the productions.) The understudies are able to view the collaborative work of professional actors, directors, designers and stage managers during rehearsals. Student designers, directors and stage managers may participate as assistants to professionals.
Recent Productions
In addition to the current season, recent productions of the department have included “Guys and Dolls,” “Ghost Ship,” “Head Over Heels,” “Touch(ed),” “The Droll (Or, a Stage-Play About The End of Theatre),” “Sweet Charity,” “In Love and Warcraft,” “Cymbeline,” “Sender,” “As You Like It,” “Bright Half Life,” “A Chorus Line,” “The Matchmaker,” “On the Lake,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Crucible,” “The Wild Party,” “Into the Woods,” “The Seagull,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Laura and the Sea.”
Recent co-productions with Syracuse Stage have included “A Christmas Carol,” “Disney’s The Little Mermaid,” “Matilda the Musical,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Three Musketeers,” “Mary Poppins” and “Peter Pan.”
Bank of America Children’s Tour
For more than 20 years Department of Drama students have introduced Syracuse community children to the theater by taking high-energy, interactive and culturally diverse performances to elementary school audiences. Produced in the fall semester in conjunction with Syracuse Stage, the Children’s Tour show is usually a 45- to 50-minute play, sometimes in musical format with a narrative style.
The show provides an important component of an actor’s training by emphasizing self sufficiency and ensemble work; the actors and stage manager are responsible for everything from driving to the school to set-up to strike. In a typical year, approximately 10,000 schoolchildren from 20 different schools experience a polished drama department production in their school. Syracuse Stage secures corporate sponsor support, so the department is able to offer the show to schools at a reasonable cost. The department also provides study guides for each show to teachers and students.
Productions have included “Pandora’s Suitcase,” “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” “The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Miss Electricity,” “Metamorphan,” “A Promise is a Promise,” “Annabel Drudge… and the Second Day of School,” “The Bully Games,” “A Thousand Cranes,” “New Kid,” “The Song from the Sea,” “The Mischief Makers,” “Fractured Fairy Tales,” and “The Great Peanut Butter Radio Hour.”
