UIC currently offers three theatre degrees:

Our curriculum balances history, theory and practice, integrating traditional performance forms with contemporary interdisciplinary practices. Courses in Acting, Voice, Movement, Directing, Playwriting, and Design help you to develop practical knowledge, cultural sensitivity, intellectual resourcefulness, and imaginative daring.

Our theatre faculty are working professionals and prominent theatre artists. The theatre department is led critically acclaimed award-winning actor, director, and Steppenwolf Ensemble member, Yasen Peyankov. Our faculty includes members of four of Chicago’s Tony Award winning theatre companies.

You will work in small classes with personalized attention from faculty.

• Develop your individual voice
• Engage in ensemble-based learning with fellow students
• Participate in coursework based on exploration—focus on process and discovery
• Learn through doing—participate in the UIC’s Mainstage Season performances and student-generated projects under the direction and coaching of the theatre faculty and guest artists
• Learn about the past and the present—integrate traditional performance theories and forms with contemporary interdisciplinary performance practices
• Get real world experience—take advantage of internships available at major Chicago theatres including Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Lookingglass Theatre Company

Performance facilities include a flexible mainstage “black box” theatre, a studio theatre, and other experimental performance spaces.

Many of the program’s graduates are employed professionally in theatre and film, or successfully pursue advanced study in prestigious graduate theatre programs.

Questions? Contact us at theatre@uic.edu. 

Meet our Theatre Alumni:

Theatre Anti-Racism Statement 

At UIC Theatre, we acknowledge that Western theatre texts, history, performance, training, and pedagogy derive from a lineage of White Supremacy. We are reviewing our teaching, including our curriculum, pedagogy, and syllabi, in order to better serve our BIPOC students and colleagues.  We commit to including more BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color) perspectives and readings on our syllabi, and to becoming increasingly well-versed in the intellectual discourse around said works.  We commit to addressing and correcting historical choices made in privileging white perspectives over others in texts and training.  

Our intention is to re-contextualize these elements to address the historical choices made in privileging certain texts and practices over others, and to show parallels of structural, formal, or thematic elements from BIPOC-centered texts and practices.

We invite students to join us on this journey.  Students are asked to take their questions or concerns to the instructor, advisor, or student rep.

— Theatre Faculty, August 25, 2020