Participate in a dynamic and thriving theater program that presents provocative and exciting productions.
Welcome to the Theatre Arts Major at Westmont College where students develop creativity, technical skills, and disciplinary knowledge within a rigorous, collaborative environment. Rooted in an incarnational perspective on theater and faith, the Theatre Arts Department helps prepare students for lives in the professional, educational, and/or community theatres; provides distinctive artistic experiences for Westmont and the immediate Santa Barbara communities; and offers opportunities to all students for developing personal, social, and artistic skills essential for life-long learning and creativity.
All the world's a stage...
Theatre in the Liberal Arts
Our Theatre in the Liberal Arts program provides a focused, hands-on foundation for students to become creative theatre makers.
Theatre Studies
Our Theatre Studies program provides a comprehensive exploration of both craft and artistry to prepare students for a career in theatre.
Film Studies
Our Film Studies program is an integrated liberal arts foundation that emphasizes the intersection of film with many disciplines and aspects of culture.
Faculty Highlights
Meet the Staff
Box Office Coordinator & Academic Assistant
An adjunct professor of flute and chamber music for Westmont Music since 2011, Andrea is happy to continue her work in arts administration by joining the Theatre Arts Department in Spring '25. She looks forward to meeting prospective students in both Music and Theatre, and being an active liaison for the Performing Arts Departments.
Assistant Technical Director
Costume Designer
Stacie Logue is pleased to join Westmont College’s Theatre Department as the costume designer for 39 Steps. This is her first production with Westmont College. She has worked in & around the Santa Barbara area in costuming. For the past 20 years Stacie has worked with Opera Santa Barbara as their costume manager & designer. She worked 8 years for the Music Academy of the West as their costume coordinator.
Career Paths
Numerous alumni are pursuing careers in acting and have appeared on both stage and screen, including television and major motion pictures or work in theater-related jobs. Others teach theater at the primary, secondary, and college/university levels. Alumni have attended top-tier graduate schools such as Harvard University/ART, CalArts, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, UMASS Amherst, the University of Arizona, San Francisco State University and UT Austin.
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Theater Arts Alumni
Rachel Herriges '23 reflects back fondly on her experience at Westmont as she pursues a life in the arts in Chicago, IL. During her time at Westmont, Rachel spent much of her time on stage acting in shows such as Kitty Hawk or Kill Devil by Hannah Kenah, and She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen. "Being on stage in these shows really helped me adapt to working with different directors, and showed me the deep joy and gratitude that comes from making art in a small community." Additionally, many of the classes Rachel took prepared her for life as an actor. "In our Launchpad class, we were given assignments like making an acting reel, a resume, and a five-year plan - all of which I've used in auditions and conversations with other creatives." However, her time at Westmont wasn't only spent as an actor. Rachel wrote many plays for the Fringe Festival which prepared her for writing her Capstone project, Hysteria. "Out of all the lessons Westmont taught me, the most important would be: you aren't just one type of artist. Having knowledge of many different facets has helped me grow as a playwright, producer, and director - as well as an actor. Knowing what each role of a production entails makes me a much more well-rounded actor, and Westmont gave me the chance to try many different roles and learn what really excites me as an artist."
Sam Stroming ‘21 is a Chicago-based actor passionate about creating and performing theatre that inspires activism. Westmont's theatre program showed her the wild, artistic possibilities of what theatre can be, from her first mainstage experience in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (2017) to the untamable creations made annually in the student-led Fringe Festival. Professors and directors in the department always kept an open door encouraging collaboration and conversation, and they have continued to provide a support system to her in her artistic endeavors since graduating. She says, “this is a place where you don't have to limit your artistry to one label of actor, designer, playwright, etc, but you have the opportunity to try anything that piques your curiosity. Here you can explore, experiment, and create without fear”.
In 2016-2017 alone, Westmont Festival Theatre presented 37 productions involving more than 125 students: five visiting productions, an international Shakespeare festival, faculty-directed plays and dance concerts, a joint production with music, senior projects, and the Westmont Fringe, 27 original pieces of theater, dance, film, and performance art. Recent shows include a diverse range of interesting work—classics, contemporary plays, original works, dance performances and musicals: “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Bertolt Brecht; “Die Fledermaus,” Johan Strauss; “As You Like It,” William Shakespeare; “Blood Wedding,” Federico Garcia Lorca; “Dido and Aeneas,” Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate; and “The Pirates of Penzance,” Gilbert and Sullivan, which won three national awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
John Blondell, Mitchell Thomas, Victoria Finlayson, and Jonathan Hicks spent much of the 2017 summer in Europe working on Shakespearean plays with the Lit Moon Theatre Company. Lit Moon performed “Hamlet,” adapted and directed by John, at the Puppets Metamorphosis Festival in Bialystok, Poland, in June. Mitchell and Victoria both acted in the play; it was the only American production at the festival, which also featured theatre companies from Poland, Lithuania, France, Hungary, and Spain. Later that month, Lit Moon presented its newest show—an all-female version of “Richard III”—at the Bitola Shakespeare Festival in Macedonia, as Victoria, along with Westmont alums Paige Tautz and Marie Ponce-De Leon, played key roles. Jonathan served as the lighting designer for both productions. “In both instances,” he observes, “we have a couple of days to rehearse, and then on the day of the performance we set up the performance space, hang and focus the lighting fixtures, do a mark-through of the show to set the lighting cues, go through a final dress, and then we open. The whole experience is energizing, challenging, and one of the most rewarding collaborative experiences of staging a theatrical production.” The Ohrid Summer Festival in Bitola also included John’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which will continue for the Bitola National Theatre’s repertoire for the 2017-2018 season.
