Acting & Theatre Studies Program

Twelfth Night 2025 Production

Create, Collaborate, and Lead

If your passion is acting or theatre, we will help you create the career you dream of! In the School of Performing Arts, you will have an immense variety of courses and productions to engage in such as plays, films, audio shows, musicals, readings, and design and technology leadership opportunities. 
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As an Acting and Theatre Studies Major

  • You will learn from nationally and internationally recognized faculty 
  • You will have opportunities to participate in classical and contemporary plays and musicals, in our three theatre spaces and work on camera through film projects. 
  • You can try your hand in all areas of production: costume, lighting, scenic/properties, management, directing and film 
  • You will create original work through classroom laboratories, production participation, student-driven projects and senior capstone projects 
  • You will work with America’s newest playwrights through our National Student Playwriting Competition and the writers that we bring to campus as part of our season  
  • You will have the opportunity to travel to conferences and workshops such as the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Society of American Fight Directors, and annual trips to NYC. 
  • You get conservatory quality training at WSU’s competitive tuition rate 
  • You will follow in the footsteps of alumni who have worked as designers, performers and technicians with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, American Shakespeare Center, Casa Mañana, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Cirque du Soliel, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Goodman Theatre, Huntington Stage, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Utah Shakespeare Festival, and in Beetlejuice (2024), Sully (directed by Clint Eastwood, and television shows such as Unusual Suspects, Modern Family, True Blood, CSI: NY and more 

 

All Degrees & Certificates in the Theatre Program

BA in Performing Arts - Theatre

This program will give you the flexibility to develop a curriculum that is tailored to your personal interests in theatre. It offers generalized study in Theatre Performance, Design & Technology with additional areas of study in directing, scriptwriting, stage management, and theatre history.

You choose from a broad range of courses that blend theatre studies along with interests in areas outside of theatre. This degree is perfect for students who wish to focus on multiple areas of theatre or who are pursuing a double major or a minor in another department.

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BFA in Performing Arts- Acting

This program gives you immersive study in the field of performance including acting, movement, stage combat and voice & speech preparing you to become a professional actor. You gain experience on stage, on screen and in audio media such as voice over work and audio theatre.

The program includes a professional practices course to prepare you for the business side of the profession.

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Certificate in Directing

This program is a great addition to any performing arts degrees. It will give you a basic skills in directing for nonmusical and musical stage work as well as film.

The certificate consists of 15 credit hours. Courses include:

  • Directing I
  • Directing II
  • Directing the Musical
  • Acting for the Camera
  • Stage Management

View the Curriculum

To add this certificate to your plan of study: 

  • Log into the myWSU portal, find the Student Tools box (center of the page) and click "Change my Major/Minor."
  • Click continue (this will show your current major and minor).
  • Click continue, then click on "Add a certificate" and choose your certificate program. Click continue and submit request.

Go to MyWSU

Certificate in Voice Acting

An undergraduate certificate in voice acting from Wichita State prepares you for a career as a voice actor in the art and entertainment industry, creating characters in animation, video games, audio books, audio shows, commercials and podcasts. You’ll develop a wide range of acting and vocal skills necessary for crafting dramatic moments and characters in vocal storytelling, and gain fundamental knowledge of audio industry mechanics.

 

The certificate consists of 19 credit hours. Courses include:

  • Improving Voice and Diction
  • Script Analysis
  • Acting I
  • Expressive Voice for Stage
  • Dialect for the Stage
  • Practicum: Performance
  • Voice Acting
  • Audio Production
    Introduction to Multimedia is a prerequisite for Audio Production.

See the Curriculum

To add this certificate to your plan of study: 

  • Log into the myWSU portal, find the Student Tools box (center of the page) and click "Change my Major/Minor."
  • Click continue (this will show your current major and minor).
  • Click continue, then click on "Add a certificate" and choose your certificate program. Click continue and submit request.

Go to MyWSU

Inside our Program

 

The Wichita State University National Playwriting Contest was created in 1974 by Bela Kiralyfalvi, Ph.D., Theatre Professor and Director of the School of Performing Arts until his retirement in 2003. In 2022, the School of Performing Arts renamed the competition to the Bela Kiralyfalvi National Student Playwriting Competition in his honor. Through this students can be a part of staged readings of a new plays selected from undergraduate and graduate student submissions across the United States.

Learn more about the Playwriting Competition

"The idea of starting to work in voice acting and acting for the camera began in 2010, when I started answering students’ questions about both areas. Voice acting was something I was already doing with a troupe in Oklahoma, along with some of my students when I taught there, so that was a pretty easy transition. Acting for the camera came from students repeatedly asking, “Why aren’t we learning about this? It’s different from stage acting, and I really want to understand it.” Some even said, “I’m getting a theatre performance degree, but I want to work in film or TV. This is the closest option available in this region.” I thought, “That has to change.”

We ended up hosting a two-day workshop with Rich Sommer from Mad Men, which really got the students excited. As a writer, I started developing a web series. We got a camera, then a microphone, and just began filming. It grew from there, more students wanted to get involved and understand what we were doing. In 2012, we launched the web series, followed by a feature-length film in 2013. From there, we moved from project to project. One year, our season calendar felt too full with theatre, dance, opera, and musical theatre, so I suggested replacing a play with a film project. The faculty supported it, and in 2015 we filmed our first official movie as part of the season, which premiered in 2016.

Since then, we’ve produced multiple feature films, a short film anthology, and even a sitcom in 2020, which may have been the highlight of our film work. Along the way, we made Acting for the Camera a required class for acting students, and we piloted a Voice Acting course, realizing that it also needed to be part of the curriculum." - Dr. Bret Jones

Check out the Acting and Theatre Studies Films