Samford's community is one of the most beautiful communities
I've ever been a part of.
Their faith for the Lord and their passion for this
art is the most inspiring thing that I've seen here.
My professors are all the most authentic and personable that I've
ever been a part of, and it's just
I feel so lucky to be here.
So the Department of Theatre and Dance comprises four different majors.
We have a Theatre for Youth major, a Musical Theatre major, an Acting
and Directing program and a Production and Design and Technology program.
And so we have all the different roles in the world of theatre
that you can imagine.
There's all kinds of things to do on stage, behind the scenes.
And I've also enjoyed
being able to write original pieces and have those performed here as well.
Operas, musicals, straight plays, mainstage
shows, student shows, including working in the scene shop, costume shop,
on the lighting.
I've learned how to write.
I've learned how to work in the scene shop.
I've learned how to do costuming and things like that, as well
as being a performer and director and playwright.
So that's a multitude of opportunities
for a student to be involved in lots of different levels of performance
from the smallest ten-minute play with just two people in it and a small stage,
up to the biggest musical that might have 50
or even 100 people in it on the largest stage.
And our stage sizes go from 100 seats up to two and a half thousand seats.
And you get to like taste and try things that you haven't tried before.
You also get to develop and grow the skills that you have.
So if you have something that you're
particularly fond of that you are particularly skillful at,
you get to build it and grow it and get to go deeper into those skills.
When you look at the skill set that theatre students gain
while they're in the program, they gain the ability to work in a group.
They gain the ability to work towards a deadline.
The ability to memorize, to improvise, to stand in front of a crowd and be present.
They absolutely take on the world and they take it on in amazing ways.
I didn't feel like I was just another person in the department.
I didn't feel like I was just a number.
I was an individual person
that had a passion, and they're willing to take the extra time
to put in the work to help me learn those skills and those techniques.
And I think that's something great about Samford, is that they're going
to do whatever it takes to make you the best that you can be for
when you graduate.
The faculty here is absolutely amazing.
They are so personal.
My first week here, most of them knew my name already,
and that was something that completely caught me off guard.
And I think they are such passionate artists
and they're the greatest teachers that we can have here
because they are working in their field as they're teaching us.
Birmingham is an amazing artistic community,
wonderful opportunities for us professionally, for our students,
which is, I think, pretty unique that we have professional theatres
in our area willing and wanting to work with our students.
A lot of programs don't allow you to audition off campus,
but we actually really encourage it here so that you can put into practice
what we're, you know, it's like using those productions as a mad scientist lab
for what you're learning in class and getting paid to do it
and to get a professional credit at the same time.
One of the things about Samford is that we are a community of faith,
and that faith shows itself in different ways.
It shows itself in the way that we work with each other on campus.
But it also shows itself in the way that we take our faith out into the community,
whether it is through the arts themselves in terms of performance,
but also it's in terms of service and how we can make those arts be useful
in other communities.
We have been to Indonesia, we've been to Africa.
There are all these different opportunities for students to take
what they learn here and use it as part of a bigger mission journey.
The skills that an artist develops are not just useful
only for themselves as an individual, but they are useful to the world.
They make the world a brighter, bolder, better place.
And that's one of the things that Samford,
I think, really strives to is to how to connect that idea
of what our faith is, but with also what our professional journey is.
And how can those two worlds live together, and how can we make use
of all those skills that we have in the service of a greater good.