Assistantships

Assistantships
Penn State provides complete financial support for each graduate student. Assistantships include full tuition waiver and a yearly cash stipend (year one approximately $13,265, including summer; years 2-3 approximately $12,195). Typically stipends are increased 3% annually. Graduate students may teach Theatre 100 and/or Theatre 102.

Theatre 100 Company
Penn State’s Theatre 100 Company is unique. This ensemble of eight graduate actors, selected from second year classes, rehearses scenes directed by M.F.A. directing students from the world’s great literature and performs them for our Art of the Theatre class: two sections with more than 400 students in each. Theatre 100 is regularly voted the Best Class according to the Daily Collegian’s survey “The Best of Penn State.”

In each semester, the Company will present scenes from works such as Antigone, Macbeth, Miss Julie, Master Harold … and the boys, M. Butterfly, and other plays representing a diverse repertoire of dramatic genres and performance styles. The semester ends with Musical Theatre Week.

The range and depth of the roles required, the brief rehearsal period, high standards, and a demanding audience combine to make the Theatre 100 experience both an ideal extension of studio training and a crucible in which the student’s day-to-day progress in craft is tested.

Theatre 102—Fundamentals of Acting for Nonmajors
Penn State offers up to sixteen sections of Theatre 102 each semester. It is a popular course taught by graduate acting and directing students to nonmajors in classrooms across campus and at times of the day that can be daunting to the teacher. Still, experience tells us that most graduate students look forward to teaching and reflect back on the experience with gratitude. When one is required to teach others what one is currently engaged in learning, the teaching of others becomes a potent means of teaching oneself.

In combination with the Theatre 100 Company assignment, the Theatre 102 teaching provides Penn State graduate acting and directing students with experiences that assist in the acquisition of craft and a deepening knowledge of the art of acting.