The Performing Arts as a Craft and Science
The Performing Arts as a Craft and Science
Participating in the performing arts is creative and fluid, involving a high degree of technical ability and concentration. It’s both a craft and a science. At RIT, the performing arts are multidimensional. With opportunities to explore the arts through course work, participate as a performer, or attend shows and concerts as an avid spectator, you’ll be challenged to think creatively about artistic expression, while appreciating the power of movement, sound, lighting, and stage production.
Getting involved at the scholarly level, you can complete a minor in theatre arts, music performance, or music and technology, which explores audio engineering and production. There are also one-on-one music lessons available, so you can continue in your musical studies or you can try out something you’ve always wanted to learn. (Like the guitar, or the clarinet you quit in sixth grade. We don’t judge.) There are more than 40 music and theater course offerings in the College of Liberal Arts, varying from Music Theory to Modern European Theater to an entire course on Beethoven, as well as courses in acting, dance, stage craft, and technical theater.
We’re home to performing groups, curricular and extracurricular, such as RIT Singers, Chamber Orchestra, Concert Band, and Jazz Ensemble. You can join Pep Band and play at hockey games in the Gene Polisseni Center, cheering on your Tigers, or audition for a fan-favorite a cappella group like Eight Beat Measure or Proof of Purchase. There is also Diversity Theater, which explores diversity through interactive theatrical workshops, the student theatre club RIT Players, and many offerings in theatre and dance available to you through NTID Performing Arts.
Whether you’re a cellist here to study engineering, or a theatre club kid majoring in museum studies, RIT’s performing arts have something to offer everyone.