Welcome to the School of Drama, a vibrant, diverse community where artists thrive. Our students, who hail from around the globe, are guided by renowned faculty members who are recognized leaders in their disciplines. They bring professional practice and scholarship from various pedagogies, perspectives, and forms of aesthetics to our classrooms, studios, and performance venues. Our BFA and MFA programs enable theater makers to grow in a dynamic artistic community that equally values breadth of skills, pedagogical and historical inquiry, and fearless vision.
Each production season, our students devise exciting new works and breathe renewed life into classic texts. They perform extant works from various genres, develop new dramatic forms, direct, write, explore performance design, and self-produce in traditional and non-traditional spaces. With students and faculty from across the College of Performing Arts they pioneer new modes of creative expression. Our approach to collaboration, experimentation, and interdisciplinarity prepares graduates for successful and sustainable careers as generative and iterative dramatic artists and creators of forms yet to be defined.
Since the 1940s, The New School has been at the forefront of dramatic arts education. The Dramatic Workshop, founded by director and producer Erwin Piscator, shaped some of the 20th century's most influential actors, activists, and writers, including Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Judith Malina, and Tennessee Williams. Today we continue to offer rigorous training programs that cultivate bold, imaginative, socially conscious, and creatively astonishing artists, including recent graduates Stefania Bulbarella, Jordan E. Cooper, Jason Kim, and Stevie Walker-Webb. We advance collaboration across backgrounds, disciplines, and kinds of experience and encourage our students to harness the power of the arts to address complex local, national, and global challenges.
Students at the School of Drama work with our exceptional faculty, celebrated professional partners, venerated guest artists, and community collaborators to create a rich tapestry of unique, thrilling dramatic work every day. We are driven, compassionate, and dedicated to shaping the present and future of our craft.
On behalf of the entire School of Drama, I invite you to explore our programs and join the next generation of visionary creators and performers.
Jermaine Hill, Dean