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School of Performing Arts

This year’s recognition of RIT’s Alfred L. Davis Distinguished Public Service Award winners will be a double celebration, as faculty and student recipients from 2020 and 2021 are honored April 13. Luane Davis Haggerty will receive the 2021 Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award, and Bhuvish Mehta will receive the 2021 Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Public Service Award. Thomas Warfield was awarded the 2020 Four Presidents Distinguished Public Service Award, and Çlirim Sheremeti was awarded the 2020 Bruce R. James ’64 Distinguished Public Service Award.

RIT/NTID presents “She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms,” for four performances, next Friday through April 18. While the audience will watch virtually, the actors will be performing live in several “actor stations” in Lyndon Baines Johnson Hall and its Robert F. Panara Theatre.

For years, Rochester Institute of Technology students have been able to take music lessons. But now, they can also learn more about the music industry by taking a class about artist management, recording, production, and marketing.

RIT students have the opportunity this spring to learn from professional artists in a series of free virtual workshops with Broadway performers and dancers. The “Broadway Comes to RIT” series will be held on Sundays, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. via Zoom.

The Innovative Maker and Learning Complex will be a building like no other on the RIT campus, and an alumnus who is helping make it possible wants RIT students to give it a name to remember. A contest to name the building is for current RIT undergraduate and graduate students in good standing. Deadline for submission is March 13. Voting will begin March 18.

New state-of-the-art sound isolation rehearsal rooms which can simulate being in a small room, large arena, or even a cathedral are available to RIT students involved in performing arts.

RIT honored the service and dedication of its employees with the Presidential Awards for Outstanding Staff ceremony Feb. 17. The annual awards, this year held as a webinar, are presented to staff members who exemplify outstanding service and dedication to the university and who exhibit a high degree of personal ethics and integrity while consistently demonstrating a strong commitment to student success.

Plans are being developed to build a performing arts center that will feature a 750-seat theater and, in a second phase, a 1,500-seat orchestra hall for larger audiences.

Now in its second year, the Performing Arts Scholars Program at RIT has more than doubled in participants, with 368 first-year students involved in classical or jazz instrumental music, voice, musical theater, acting, technical theater, dance, or video game composition.

WXXI talks to Luane Haggerty, curator and adapter-director of RIT/NTID's production of Spoon River Anthology.

Physical distancing and the inability to perform in front of a live audience during the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped the cast and director of SOMNIUM, which premieres online Friday. SOMNIUM features actors and a green screen, which provides a virtual reality space allowing the audience to participate.

Video applications are being accepted for the fourth annual Dr. Munson’s Performing Arts Challenge, to be held virtually during Feb. 5 at FreezeFest. RIT President David Munson created the challenge to spotlight and encourage RIT students involved in performing arts to show their diverse talents.