When considering where to pursue your theatre degree, here's the number one question you should ask yourself:

"Do I want to be one of hundreds of anonymous undergraduate students watching the graduate students in my department walk away with the plum performance and design roles, or do I want to be one of a group of undergraduate students afforded performance and design opportunities that would be the envy of graduate performance and design students at any major university?"

At Troy University, nearly 100% of roles (onstage and backstage) are filled by undergraduate students, with the remainder filled by community members when the demands of the role require it. As a theatre student at Troy University you will have opportunities that at larger universities would be filled by MFA Acting students and MFA Design students.

Every year many of our students are honored by the Kennedy Center with nominations for Irene Ryan acting awards, and a considerable number have advanced to the semi-final and final rounds of the Irene Ryans, offering them the opportunity to display their talent regionally and onstage at the Kennedy Center during its student acting showcase.

Our more experienced student designers are often offered the almost unheard of opportunity to take on design responsibilities for Troy University mainstage productions. Many of these student designers have been honored by the Kennedy Center with awards for their design. Once again, the opportunity for an undergraduate to design any realized department show, much less a fully realized show for a mainstage production, is unheard of at major universities that must support dozens of graduate student designers in lighting design, sound design, costume design, set design, theatre promotion and management, and stage management.

After four years of hard work, do you want your resume to reflect realized performance and/or design experience, or do you want that resume to reflect nothing more than the occasional supporting role and unrealized lighting, costume, set, sound, or publicity designs that were constructed as class projects but never really used? It's up to you.

Troy University theatre students finish their program with enviable resumes, and a large percentage of our students go on to graduate programs in which they excel because of the portfolios and resumes they have developed over their time at Troy University.