We are a dynamic department dedicated to teaching and learning about dance and theater through various forms of inquiry. We combine faculty actors, directors, designers, dancers, playwrights, and choreographers continuously engaged in professional theater and dance productions with faculty doing internationally recognized research in the study of theater, dance, and performance. Students who become involved with the PAD find a generous, challenging, and responsive home base at Washington University.
Our Mission
The Performing Arts Department of Washington University, housed in the Division of the Humanities in Arts and Sciences, is dedicated to teaching the disciplines of theater and dance as a fundamental part of a liberal arts education based in a research university. We believe that the practice and study of theater, dance, and performance provide crucial interpretive windows into history and culture and that they deepen our understanding of diverse human experience across time and around the globe. We believe that both rigorous critical study of these cultural forms and disciplined aesthetic practice provide vital modes of inquiry that advance knowledge. It therefore follows that we promote the integration of study and practice at every level of our curriculum, and in our production season as well. It is our belief that artistic practice in theater and dance significantly extends one’s understanding of artistic form, in its historical as well as its aesthetic dimensions. Equally importantly, we hold that critical study and intellectual engagement with a wide range of historical and cultural manifestations of theater, dance, and performance can make for more vital and important art.