Theatre
The Hollins theatre program was named as one of the Top 10 Best College Theatres by The Princeton Review, and has won multiple Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Awards, including their highest honor, the Gold Medallion.
In May 2019, OnStage Blog, which covers theatre on an international level, named Hollins Theatre as the top undergraduate theatre program in Virginia.
Hollins’ nationally recognized theatre program allows students to identify and apply their own strengths. We help each student write, design, build, direct, and star in the most important play on the planet: their life.
Tracks
Major
Theatre major students at Hollins take part in every aspect of theatre production. This includes acting, musical theatre, design, directing, stage management, and technical production. The theatre major has a flexible structure allowing students to focus in one of three areas: acting/directing, design/technology, playwriting/history/dramaturgy or any combination of these three. It’s also designed to make it easy to double major.
Minor
The minor is compatible with many other majors. These include business, communication studies, dance, English, film, history, and philosophy.
What You'll Learn
A Home Away From Home
Decision Height, a play written by Meredith Dayna Levy, received the Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award, along with numerous citations of excellence by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). Meredith, who graduated from Hollins’ M.F.A. program in playwriting in 2018, has had similar success with her play, Coupler. It won KCACTF’s “Distinguished Production of New Work” award. She Made Space, which Meredith both wrote and performed, was featured at the 2019 North Carolina Women’s Theatre Festival, an event that champions gender parity, diversity, and inclusion in the American theatre. “I could not have asked for a more beautifully supportive and constructive development process than that which [the faculty] and my undergraduate and graduate peers so generously provided,” Meredith says. “I feel really lucky to have had that support so early in my playwriting career.”
Putting Ideas into Practice
Students learn how to:
- Improvise
- Manage projects
- Work with a limited budget
- Deal with different human beings
- Understand the human condition
- Overcome “technical difficulties”
Triple Talent
Susanna Young is acting, directing, and choreographing around the country with several companies, including Skypilot Theatre, Creating Arts Company, and the Academic of New Musical Theatre, and teaching theatre and dance in southwest and central Virginia. She regularly returns to Hollins to serve as guest director, choreographer, actor, and acting instructor. Susie holds a B.A. in theatre and a graduate certificate in New Play Directing.
Facilities
Our charming and recently renovated 550-seat proscenium theatre is remarkably intimate with:
- A flexible front-apron configuration
- Automated rigging system
- Fully equipped scenery and costume shops
- Design studio, makeup studio, and light lab
- A 99-seat black box theatre and acting studio
- Sound, projection, and computer lab
