In Fall 2024, the curtain rose on a new program in the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts at Texas A&M: a bachelor of arts in fine arts in theatre. Since last year, this program has set the stage to help students graduate with training in performance, design and production, as well as arts administration and community engagement.
The new program is taking a comprehensive approach to theater, aiming to expose students to a diverse range of subjects in theatrical performance. The course catalog offers classes across all focus areas of the major, such as “Creating Performance,” “Design and Production” and “Intro to Devised Theatre.”
The third course is fundamental to a theater major’s education at A&M, as it introduces them to the unique theatrical discipline of devised theater, which is the new program’s main focus.
Devised theater is a non-conventional style of theater that teaches students how to deviate from traditional script acting and create their own productions from the ground up. Professor of devised theatre in the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts Michael Poblete, Ph.D., explained that it is a “collective theater making methodology that begins with no script … and it works in a nonhierarchical fashion.”
The construction of a storyline, creation of characters and writing of lines for a production is a collaborative, on-stage effort between actors, designers, directors and others involved in a theatrical production.
“Devising is a process, not about the product,” George McConnell, Ph.D, an associate professor of devised theatre at A&M, said.
The process of devising, as McConnell explained, is one that pushes an artist out of their comfort zone and forces them to create a production based on a “departure point” or crude idea.
“Some [students] from geology, architecture and engineering [audition for the shows], which is exactly what we wanted,” Poblete said. “We really want to cast a wide net … and let the Texas A&M Community know that you do not need to be a major or a minor to take part in our shows,”
The central focus of the new program at A&M, therefore, is to include a diverse variety of students and develop their problem-solving skills as they create and refine projects onstage through trial-and-error, as McConnell explained. Faculty members, including Poblete and McConnell, are involved in facilitating success in these areas by offering guidance and perspective to students throughout the devising process.
“[The theater] program is setting [students] up to either move into a non-theater related field with soft skills of communication, creative thinking and collaboration. Or into theater jobs, because they are learning all of [the disciplines] at once and will have so many tools to offer and fit into the industry,” McConnell explained.
Not only is the new Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Theatre important to the development of future actors and actresses, but it also serves as a unique way to prepare students for careers in education, digital media, law, public relations and more.
Dinesh Yadav, Ph.D., an interdisciplinary researcher, educator and performance artist who specializes in theatrical design, elaborated on the broader importance of the A&M theater program.
“[A&M is] strongly grounded in science, engineering and technology,” Yadav said. “But it’s important that the humanist perspective of life should be there.”
Yadav also expressed that involvement in the performing arts instills a societal appreciation for beauty and collaboration.
“[The Arts] reduce the idea of otherness,” Yadav said.
Yadav said that even though the performing arts are relatively new to A&M, they align beautifully with the Core Values of the university: Respect, Excellence, Leadership, Loyalty, Integrity and Selfless Service and contribute to fostering the sense of community that is unique to the culture of A&M.
