Turn your love for music or theater into an exciting career.
With the explosive growth of user generated content on social platforms and the rise of AI, the professional performing arts industry is changing rapidly. Our Performing Arts major will prepare you for a new kind of creative work force.
The Performing Arts major at Graceland University is a unique program that offers three distinct tracks: Business and Entrepreneurship, Dramatic Media, and Performance Studies. These tracks allow you focus on the part of the fine arts that most interests you whether it is as a performer, director, or as a key member of the production or marketing team.
Through practical experience in campus productions, you will build a broad resume as a performer, technician, designer, or manager. With a best in southern Iowa recital hall, an expansive auditorium stage and a cutting-edge transformable black box theatre, the Shaw Center offers the perfect backdrop for you to discover your own artistic voice and vision.
Centered around Graceland’s diverse and passionate creative community, the Performing Arts program offers various customization options and scholarship opportunities.
All Performing Arts majors complete a broad core of courses followed by one of three distinct tracks.
A hybrid of theatre, film, music, and new media – this track specifically targets the contemporary trends and growth areas in the performing arts. You will receive transformative training in aspects of design and music technology, film, directing, media history, and leadership for a digital performing arts world.
Focused on the business, management, and entrepreneurial side of the performing arts, this concentration gives you the opportunity to learn business practices and apply management skills on campus as a part of the music, production, stage, and box office teams. This is an area that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is growing nationally. This track is ideally suited for a career as a producer, talent agent, artistic director, executive director, and more.
This track features a focused study and training in music or theatre performance. From all aspects of live and filmed performance, this concentration gives you a holistic approach to what it means to be a performer, with a deep dive into instrumental and vocal performance technique, performance for the stage and screen, immersive script and production analysis, and studies in performance innovation. This is also the track you will take if you are interested in teaching K-12 music or theatre.
I loved almost everything about Graceland, but I loved hanging out in the Shaw Center. I was always in the piano lab or the practice room. People around the community knew me as the bassoonist, bassoon player, or Puerto Rico. Also, the professors and the staff were great. I'm thankful for everyone I met at Graceland and those who left a positive imprint on me.
The theatre department is incredible; through it I have found my calling and career. I am so fortunate of the foundation Graceland provided me. Graceland is special because of the relationships and traditions they stem from. Once you make it to Graceland, you're one of us and we're all here for you; a worldwide network of supportive, passionate and kind people who all smile in the same language!
Music and dramatic media surround and connect us through all of our senses. Whether in front of an audience or behind the scenes, there is room for performing artists in many different fields. A Performing Arts major from Graceland can help to prepare you for a career as a:
…and many other exciting fields.
99% of students on the Lamoni campus receive financial aid.
As you consider college, you want a simple, easy-to-understand formula designed to ensure that the one-of-a-kind Graceland Experience is within reach for your family. Undergraduate tuition includes our unique Transformational Leadership major, and we offer generous financial aid and scholarships to all of our students, making Graceland as affordable, if not moreso, than most public universities.
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