Theater and Performance

Bard College’s Theater and Performance Program offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts-based approach to the making and study of theater and performance. The title, Theater and Performance, signals the program’s embrace of a wide range of dramatic, theatrical, and performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe. Theater and performance are intrinsically collaborative, and collaboration is at the heart of students’ work, which emphasizes process, cohort-building, and dialogue between theatrical work and the social, cultural, and political contexts. Students study, create, and perform in the landmark Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry.

The practice of integrity and respect for the form, self, and the community are central to our work as faculty and students. We strive to deepen and strengthen these commitments through analytical study, rehearsal and creation processes. Invested in a culture of responsibility, we reject white supremacy and work against the exclusionary ways that Eurocentrism and patriarchy have shaped theater education. We aim to explore and celebrate the diversity of the U.S. and the world. We encourage ongoing self-inquiry, exploration of form and content, originality, imagination, and dedication to hard work in pursuit of excellence.

Theater and Performance News

The Bard Theater & Performance Program now includes Theater and Performance as a Second Focus:

Second Focus in Theater and Performance (five courses total):
- One of the following courses from the "Context" section of the Theater & Performance course list:
Introduction to Contemporary Performance
Introduction to World Theater Traditions

- Two of the three following courses from the "Technique" section of the Theater & Performance course list:
Introduction to Acting: The Actor and the Moment
Introduction to Playwriting
Introduction to Directing

- Two additional 200 or 300-level classes from any part of the Theater & Performance course list*

*Please note that Theater Making is the only course we cannot open to students who are not planning to moderate in T&P since it is the course directly linked to moderation.

The Bard College Theater & Performance Program Presents:
Puntila and Matti, His Hired Man

by Bertolt Brecht
Based on stories by Hella Wuolijoki
Translated by Ralph Manheim
Directed by Rebecca Wright

Oct. 24th 7:30pm
Oct. 25th - 2pm & 7:30pm
Oct. 26th - 4pm

Fall 2025 Mainstage Production | LUMA Theater | Fisher Center at Bard

Theater in Action

Workshop Performance
By Lucas Baisch, directed by Kedian Keohan '16, with a team of student collaborators
Saturday, September 20, 2025, 2pm,
Resnick Studio, Fisher Center for the Performing Arts

Untitled E-Waste Play charts the Silicon Valley’s electronics industry by plunging back into California’s timeline of extraction. Through the supernatural and the strange, missionaries, gold miners, farmers, and programmers all converge on one rhyming idea: “history” is forever speculative.
Senior Project Work in Progress Festival 2024

The Bard College Theater and Performance Program Presents:

SPROJ WIP
Program A
November 22nd - 7:30 pm
November 23rd - 2:00pm

Program B
November 23rd - 7:30pm
November 24th - 4:00pm

LUMA Theater
Fisher Center at Bard

Program A: Sophia Barbastuly; Ruby Miller; Lucy Berger; Ifigeneia Gianne; Andrés Berman; Jingyi Mao; Leo Riley & Aidan Kennedy; Thyme Weiss
Program B: Sam Roberts; Andie Schultz; Silas Lloyd; Olivia Dower; Lily Mikita; Slater Hanna; Milla Meiman
The Dream

The Bard College Theater & Performance Program Presents:

The Dream
Oct. 25th - 7:30pm
Oct. 26th - 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Oct. 27th - 4:00pm

Directed by Jorge Schults
Adapted by Dezi Tibbs and Jorge Schults
Set and Props Design: Joshua James Barilla
Costume Design: Valérie Thérèse Bart
Lighting Design: Josh Martinez-Davis
Sound Design: Max Silverman
Production Stage Manager: Ally MacLean
The Bard College Theater & Performance Program Presents:

Urinetown, the Musical
Book and Lyrics by Greg Kotis
Music and Lyrics by Mark Hollmann
Directed by Liz Peterson
Music Direction by David Sytkowski
Senior Project
Work-in-Progress
Festival

The Theater & Performance Program's Fall Work-in-Progress Festival, November 17–19, 2023, will present excerpts, drafts, and in-process performances from the 2023–2024 senior cohort. Collaboratively created and supported by peers, Senior Project Colloquium, advisors, and Fisher Center staff, the festival is a space of process, evolution, and artistic discovery. Open to the T&P community and invited guests.
Spring Senior Project Festival
Migration
by Chiori Miyagawa
Music by David Crandall
Directed by Jubilith Moore
Migration
and other new and classic works**

**Reading of a new “Kyogen” play by the NOHing Company
Excerpt from the classic Kyogen Play, Busu (Sweet Poison)
Excerpt from the classic Noh, The Sumida River

Oct. 20 – 7:30 pm
Oct. 21 – 1 pm & 7:30 pm
Oct. 22 – 2 pm
LUMA Theater
Light and Video Workshop

Light and Video Workshop will meet from 6–9 pm in the Luma Theater from Monday, November 6 through Friday, November 10.

Sign up by October 27 utilizing the form by clicking here.
"Unveiling the Vortex," a new work by director Amy Trompetter of Redwing Blackbird Theater in Rosendale, NY

Kingston Academy Green
Sep. 30 at 3 pm
(rain date Oct. 1)

"Unveiling the Vortex," is a giant puppet, mask, and music spectacle, inviting us to unstick ourselves from modern paralytic privacy to a yet-to-be-invented communal dance, inspired by three local women; Sunksqua Mama Nuchewe, Sojourner Truth, & Hannah Arendt. This free large-scale pageant style theater piece brought to you by Redwing Blackbird Theater with support from the Rodney L. White Foundation, The Library at the A.J. Williams-Myers African Roots Center, and Radio Kingston. No tickets necessary.

Photo by Vera Yung

Bard Summer Theater Intensive in Berlin

The essence of the program is the creative engagement between our students and a wide variety of multidisciplinary artists working in theater and performance in Berlin. Students explore and develop a vocabulary of creation as each artist approaches the theme from a unique perspective consistent with his/her own artistic practice. Each week will culminate in devised work that will be critiqued in a rigorous but constructive way. Students will also work in groups to create a larger scale project over the four weeks of the program that will incorporate the discoveries made each week.

Learn More

A Place for Bold, Exciting Work by Students

Bard College students have a long history of creating fresh, original productions on campus. The Bard Musical Theater Company, POC Theater Ensemble, and Bard Bards are just a few of the student clubs dedicated to theater and performance. The Old Gym is Bard's student-run performance space, used by theater artists, dancers, musicians, and visual artists.
Students perform Sophocles' Electra at Blithewood on the Bard campus. Directed by Francis Karagodins. Photo by Alex Lopez

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