Performing Arts Minor

Set the Stage for Your Success

The Colby-Sawyer performing arts minor combines the many aspects of performance study — acting, dance, music, and technical theater — and allows you to build a curriculum with either breadth in multiple areas or depth in a single area of focus.

All students in the minor take the required core course, Stagecraft, which provides a common groundwork in performance production. You will decide how to use the remaining 16 credits in the minor, taking courses like acting, theatrical design, music theory and composition, applied vocal and instrumental music, dance and public speaking.

Get in on the Act

Build confidence, learn to improvise, and cultivate your creativity with Colby-Sawyer's performing arts minor. Sing, dance or act in a production, design a set, or learn to play an instrument.

Complement your major coursework with an exploration of your artistic side with hands-on, experiential learning. Gain firsthand experience in productions in the John and Heidi Niblack Black Box Theater, which allows for flexible staging, alternate lighting configurations and greater intimacy between audience and performers.

Take Your Show on the Road

In As You Like It, William Shakespeare wrote that “all the world’s a stage.” Shakespeare understood that the skills you’ll develop through the performing arts —the confidence to express yourself in a stressful situation, the ability to present yourself as you would like to be seen, and the self-understanding that performance cultivates — are skills you’ll use in all aspects of your life.

While some of our former graduates have gone on to pursue careers as professional lighting designers, filmmakers, stage managers and Hollywood actors, the performing arts minor is a course of study that can make you more marketable in any field.