Individualized Major

The Department of Performance Arts offers an individualized major that allows the student to focus on speech communication/ theater arts or music through courses chosen. An individualized major with performance arts as a component allows students to combine courses in this department with carefully selected courses from another department or departments. The courses that complete an individualized major are chosen with the aid of a faculty advisor.

Students prepare for careers in such varied fields as musical and theatrical performance, communications, translation/interpretation, broadcast journalism, corporate training, teaching, theater design, music publishing, and stage managing.

It is also possible to combine theater arts and music without involving another department. There are many performance opportunities through involvement with the Emmanuel College Theater Guild, which performs one dramatic play and one musical each year. Students also direct one-act plays under faculty guidance. Student playwriting is encouraged. The Performance Techniques for the Singing Actor and Dance courses present one show each semester. The Emmanuel Singers and the Colleges of the Fenway Orchestra are among the performance opportunities.

A departmental internship is available, and students have interned at such sites as the Huntington Theatre, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, J Magazine, the Speakeasy Theatre, the Massachusetts Bureau of Travel and Tourism and the New England Aquarium.