Dean Travis Preston's Introduction

As one of the preeminent theater training programs in the country, we are dedicated to the development of new voices and new forms. The training we provide is designed to educate the whole person and to prepare fully equipped theater artists to enter and transform the field.

Our mission is to forge a community of citizen artists who are rigorously trained in their respective métiers and who are concomitantly able to work effectively and innovatively across a broad spectrum of artistic settings, media, and technologies. With the practical conditions for theater artists constantly evolving, our training gives students the flexibility, skill, and ingenuity to navigate a rapidly changing environment and to pursue their dreams with maximum agency.

The School has two branches: Programs in Performance include courses of study in acting, directing, and writing for performance; Programs in Design and Production comprise scene, costume, lighting and sound design, technical direction, and management. Within the Programs in Design and Production are further specializations, or supplemental courses of study, in producing, production management, stage management, scene painting, and video for performance. An additional specialization in puppetry is housed at the School’s Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.

All of these disciplines interact continuously as the School presents an extensive series of productions each year: full-scale works staged in connection with the curriculum, original projects developed and produced in collaboration with internationally renowned artists and organizations, and an annual, student-driven New Works Festival. Our five theater spaces—the architecturally unique Walt Disney Modular Theater and four black-box theaters—often run productions simultaneously. We also make use of other on- and off-campus sites and venues, both conventional and unconventional.

The CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), the producing arm of the Institute, has a unique role in furthering our community’s relationship to the wider professional world. Established as a forum for the creation of groundbreaking performance, the CNP creates opportunities for students to work shoulder to shoulder with artists of the highest caliber. This collaborative work is distinctive and extends beyond the curriculum, offering a depth and breadth of research, practice and professional experience that far surpasses a conventional academic approach.

The CalArts School of Theater is a singular place—unlike anywhere else in the world in the passionate and mindful pursuit of mission and in support of our students’ individual aesthetics, dreams, and professional aspirations.

Travis Preston

Dean, CalArts School of Theater

theater.calarts.edu