Theater and Performance at Bard College
Theater and Performance
Apply Now!
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 Theater & Performance Program Presents:
The Antipodes
Written by Annie Baker
Directed by Jonathan Rosenberg
2026 Spring Mainstage
Showtimes:
April 17th - 7:30pm
April 18th - 2:00pm and 7:30pm
April 19th - 4:00pm
LUMA Theater | Fisher Center at Bard
View More > >
Theater in Action
The Bard Theater & Performance Program Presents:
SPROJ
2026 Senior Project Luma Festival
William Axelrod
Rose Albert
Ethan Malpica-Santiago
Frances Ronning
Eric Wang
Lucy Gerston
Azalea Rusillon
The Bard College Theater & Performance Program Presents:
2025 SPROJ Work-In-Progress Festival
Fall 2025 Mainstage Production | LUMA Theater | Fisher Center at Bard
Program A
Chloe Desautels
Trudy Poux
Asher Cass
Caelan Leo-Fields
Intermission
Yadier Pérez Pagán
Atticus Belmonte
Eric Wang
Azalea Rusillon
Program B
Frances -Ronning
Anthony Leo
William Axelrod
Brendan Paholak
Intermission
Lucy Gerston
Ethan Mapica-Santiago
Max Hopkins
Rose Albert
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.
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 | LU
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.
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
Browse Student Clubs
Discover More
Interested in learning more?
Here are programs similar to Theater and Performance at Bard College.
Bard Fisher Center
Fisher Center LAB
Arts and Society in Berlin
Student Clubs