Theatre & Dance Performances
Each year, the department presents a season of theatrical performances featuring students of many majors.
Students participate in productions that embrace a wide range of theatrical traditions, including recent contemporary works, classical dramas, improvisational and interactive theatre pieces, and dance ensemble concerts.
2024-2025 Season
Let the Right One In
Written by: Jack Thorne
Director: George Potter
Location: University Theatre
Performances: October 25-26 and November 1-2 at 8:00 pm; October 27 and November 3 at 2:00 pm
About the Performance:
Oskar is a bullied, lonely teenage boy living with his mother on a housing estate at the edge of town when a spate of sinister killings rock the neighborhood. Eli is the young girl who has just moved in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. Sensing in each other a kindred spirit, the two become devoted friends. What Oskar doesn’t know is that Eli has been a teenager for a very long time.
An enchanting, brutal vampire myth and coming-of-age love story adapted from the bestselling novel and award-winning film.
Dance Ensemble
Director: Salena Elish
Location: University Theatre
Performances: January 31 and February 1 at 8:00 pm; February 2-3 at 2:00 pm
About the Performance:
The Dance Ensemble takes the stage in the month of February, bringing student and faculty choreographed dance to the Valparaiso community.
Spring Musical
Director: TBA
Location: University Theatre
Performances: April 3-4 at 8:00 pm; April 5-6 at 2:00 pm
Past Performances
Past main stage performances have included such titles as She Kills Monsters, Tuck Everlasting, Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music, Doublewide, Texas, The Dream of the Burning Boy, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Our Town, Pippin, The Lady from the Sea, Rose and the Rime, The Spitfire Grill, Mr. Burns, The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!), The Bacchae, Sylvia, Godspell, Mosque Alert, The Eyre Affair, God of Carnage, The School for Lies, An Evening of Short Plays by Beckett, Dido and Aeneas, Eurydice, Arcadia, Macbeth, Sweeney Todd, Marriage, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, How I Learned to Drive, The House of Bernarda Alba, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Circle Mirror Transformation, Hansel and Gretel, The Arabian Nights, Floyd Collins, The Universal Wolf, Tartuffe, Almost Maine, Twelfth Night, Cabaret, and Fuddy Meers.
See photographs and video footage from recent productions »
One thing that drew me to Valpo was the variety of shows that the department performs. In just one season we did a translation of a Russian show; Sweeney Todd, which is one of the best musicals ever written; Macbeth, which is Shakespeare and difficult; and Arcadia, considered one of the best-written plays of the 20th century. We’re given challenges, that’s for sure.
– Stefan Roseen ’15