Theatre is a live, human, creative, and spiritual experience, which has the power to transform and educate as well as entertain an audience.
LMU Theatre Arts offers all students a four year experience in which they will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of possible roles in the theatre: performer, designer, technician, dramaturg, audience member, etc.
We recognize historical inequities in American theatre and thus pledge to create seasons that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive of ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, and disability and neural status.
We recognize that theatre, both historically and in this moment, is both global and spatially and temporally located in the local, and thus we pledge to our students an international theatre experience as well as one rooted in the theatre culture of Southern California.
We recognize both the need to commit to diversity, equity and inclusion within individual seasons as well as across the four years of an LMU education.
We commit to diversity, equity and inclusion in the selection of plays, playwrights, experiences, stories, and roles.
We commit to training all of our students to work professionally in the theatre, and thus emulate professional practice within the boundaries of our Department resources.
We commit to creating a fully inclusive, dynamic season with the intent to recruit and retain a talented, diverse student body from a variety of backgrounds and experiences.
We commit to conscious casting – recognizing that a performer’s ethnicity, gender, orientation, disability and gender matter and are visible, and thus will be accounted for in casting in a manner which informs the production and the play. (i.e. no “colorblind” or “genderblind” casting)
To that end, considering the Theatre Arts Student Learning Outcomes, we commit to creating a four year season experience that our students will live in, explore, cultivate, and carry into the profession.
As part of that experience, the Theatre Arts community will engage in a variety of theatrical forms, genres, and encounters. These include, but are not limited to:
Applied Theatre
Physical Theatre
Political Theatre
Adaptations
Contemporary Theatre/Drama
Community Engagement
Global/International drama/performance
Musical Theatre or Play w/ Music
Language plays (heightened language, dialects, etc.)
An experience with realism
The development of new drama/performance (including working with playwrights)
Opportunity to experience a variety of artists (included guest artists)
These would include gender and BIPOC playwright minimums, commitments to recruiting and casting of BIPOC students and underrepresented voices.