Interdisciplinary Technical Skills for a Fulfilling Career!
The Design and Technology program is a hands-on professional education program. Our students apply what is learned in the classroom on productions on campus and with professional companies across the region. In addition, our program maintains strong contacts with our professional organizations through active participation from our faculty, staff and students.
Our students, whether BA, BFA or MFA, work on several shows every year, giving them hundreds of hours of job-training. Our graduates are competitive in the marketplace, graduating with rich resumes and interview skills that make them well-qualified to continue training in an advanced degree program or move directly into the industry.
One Program, Many Opportunities
The Design and Technology Program is home to specialized training with transferrable skills across all areas of stagecraft, performance, and live-events.
The Costume Shop oversees construction and implementation of designs for theatre and dance productions. There is a shop staff of 4 to 7 students who work as cutter/draper, stitcher, craft artisan, milliner, wig master and costume stock manager. Additional work is performed by the Production crew classes. Equipment includes 7 domestic machines, 7 industrial machines, 4 domestic sergers, 2 industrial sergers, and a blind hemmer. There are 15 dress forms for draping and large tables for cutting and drafting. The space includes a fitting area, laundry room, dyeing and craft room and a makeup classroom. The School maintains an extensive stock of modern and period costumes.
The Scene Shop is 8000 square feet with a 30’ x 60’ motorized paint frame. We are fully equipped to build scenery out of wood, steel, plastic or foam. Along with a great array of industrial and hand tools we feature a plasma cutter, 3d printer, a hot wire table cutter and access to a CNC router. Our shops and theatre are adjacent to one another so we can move scenery from one space to another easily and conveniently.
The Light Shop/Lighting Laboratory is used for student experimentation as well as classroom instruction. Along with storage and repair facilities, this facility has a permanent grid, an ETC SmartFade 24/48 lighting console, and a dedicated ETC SmartPack with 1.2Kw dimmers. The light shop staff, who are paid student employees, are responsible for maintaining over 800 pieces of equipment shared between our three performance venues and the Montana Repertory Theatre. The equipment includes ETC, Strand, Altman and L&E conventional ERS, Fresnel, PAR, PARNel, ERF, Cyc, striplight fixtures and accessories, Phillips/Color Kinetics LED fixtures, Apollo color scrollers and gobo rotators, Martin MAC 250 moving lights, City Theatrical ShoWDMX wireless dimming systems, Viewsonic Video projectors and accessories along with atmospheric effects equipment.
The Sound Shop/Recording Studio include a recording studio used for student experimentation and classroom instruction. Housed in the recording studio is a Neotek 20x8 analogue audio console, an audio workstation with Avid ProTools v11 audio production software, Digi-003 Rack/factory audio interface, and Figure 53 QLab v2.3 audio engine for development of production audio playback.
Students interested in stage management take an interdisciplinary curriculum that includes both technical skills and people skills. They become masters of collaboration working with all artists on a production to ensure the vision of the collective is realized efficiently and safely.
Students build, buy, and manage our extensive collection of properties which are used throughout our production season. We also rent properties to local companies as well as film and television production companies working in the area.
Becoming a Major
You do not need any previous experience in technical theatre. We are here to teach you what you’ll need to know. A large part of our students have had theatre classes in High School, some had work experience. However, we also have majors that come from an art or home construction or sewing background.
Students can declare their interest in Design and Technology when applying to the university. All students are admitted to the BA before applying to their desired area of specialization in the spring their first year.
Technical theatre graduates are in demand in the workplace. They are motivated people who embrace challenges and deliver on promises. They are passionate in all their pursuits. Training, experience, and a good attitude are the three things that get people jobs; a technical theatre degree provides these to anyone interested in an exciting and dynamic technical career in theatre, film and/or television.
A wide variety of job opportunities are available to theatre technicians nationwide. You may find employment as a lighting or sound technician, set designer or carpenter, costume designer or costume technician, scenic artist, makeup artist, or drama teacher. Can you make a good living at technical theatre? Yes, but there are sacrifices and you will not often work a 'normal’ schedule, as each show will have different demands. You might consider going into educational tech theater, where the hours can be more regular. In larger cities you will have more work opportunities. The key point is that if you are good, you will work. If you are not good, word will get around fast and you won't work. There is also lots of interesting related work that involves technical theatre: working for theme-park entertainment, pageants, cruises, film and TV, or working at a theatre manufacturer and selling theatrical equipment or being a theatre consultant. There are lots of office theatre jobs available for people with a variety of backgrounds and abilities that offer a normal schedule, such as working as a booking agent or at a box office. There are countless theatre career paths, especially to those students who learn "parallel" skills (AutoCAD, for example) that may ease the transition if you decide to change paths in the future.
Recent alumni have gone on to attend graduate training programs at: Carnegie-Mellon University, NYU, Northwestern University, LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), Ohio University and more. Various graduates working in the profession hold positions with: Cirque du Soleil, Los Angeles Opera, ETC, Steppenwolf Theatre and free-lance design and technical positions in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas and abroad. Their extensive design credits include Broadway, Off Broadway, dance, film, television, concert, sports and industrials.
Production Opportunties
The School of Theatre & Dance mounts multiple mainstage performances each year. The mainstage season is selected to meet the curriculum needs of our student body and to encourage attendance by the local Missoula community. They include the opportunity to collaborate with Graduate Students directors as well as faculty and student choreographers and dancers.
Montana Repertory Theatre is the professional theatre-in-residence at the University of Montana. Montana Rep provides paid professional opportunities for students as performers and technicians working alongside professionals in their local and touring productions. Montana Rep works under an agreement with Actors' Equity Association and is a member of The Theatre Communications Group (TCG).