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.
In addition, a variety of showcase performances and special projects — such as student one-acts, staged readings, and laboratory productions — are presented throughout the year, providing numerous acting, directing, design, and management opportunities as well as the ability to receive academic credit toward graduation for participation in mainstage productions.
Current Season
Director: R. Andrew White
Location: University Theatre
Performances: Oct 27 and 28, 2022 at 8 p.m.
and Oct. 29 and 30, 2022 at 2 p.m.
About the Performance:
Eve Wilfong, who lives over the “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music Bar,” is paid a visit by her niece Catherine Empanger, a novice nun who’s been asked to leave her convent. It seems Catherine suffers from a curious compulsion to yell obscenities at the wrong moment, and even, on occasion, bark like a dog. Roy, an honest if simple fellow from the bar downstairs, wants to court Catherine whether she’s a nun or not. Eve feels she should give her niece the benefit of her experiences with men before allowing her to venture back into the mad modern country world. What follows is not simply comic and well-observed, but romantic and affecting as well.
Location: Studio Theatre
Performances: Dec. 6 and 7, 2022 at 7:00 p.m.
About the Performance:
One-act plays, directed by senior theatre majors as part of their capstone coursework for the theatre department. Titles to be determined.
Directors: Ann Kessler and Salena Elish
Location: University Theatre
Performances: Feb 2 and 3, 2023 at 8 p.m.
and Feb. 4 and 5, 2023 at 2 p.m.
About the Performance:
The Dance Ensemble takes the stage in the month of February, bringing student and faculty choreographed dance to the Valparaiso community.
Student Director: Karter Ensley
Location: Studio Theatre
Performances: April 27 and 28, 2023 at 8 p.m.
and April 29 and 30, 2023 at 2 p.m.
About the Performance:
In this hilarious, fast-paced comedy, the inhabitants of one of the smallest trailer parks in Texas—four doublewides and a shed—are thrown for a loop when they realize the nearby town of Tugaloo is determined to annex them. The rollicking mayhem of this flat-out funny Jones Hope Wooten comedy escalates as the residents attempt to secede from Texas, discover a traitor in their midst, and turn the tables in a surprising and side-splitting finale. So grab your Stetson and come on over to Doublewide, Texas, where life is double the fun, double the joy, and where audiences double over with laughter!
Past Performances
Past main stage performances have included such titles as 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