Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts

Get Ready to Perform, Design, and Construct Your Next Performance

Webster University’s Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts offers professional training programs in acting, musical theatre, directing, design, technical theatre, and stage management.

Sargent Conservatory is associated with professional theatre companies, two of which are on campus: The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Explore below to learn more about our sequential and intensive programs for training theatre artists.

Sargent Conservatory Season

WebCo proudly announces its 2022–2023 season

Stage performance of Sondheim on Sondheim with several performers

Join us at the theatre.

American Idiot	Oct. 7–9
Sueño	Nov. 4–13
Seminar	Dec. 2–11
A Bright Room Called Day	Feb. 17–19
Rain and Zoe Save the World	Mar. 3–5
Mud	Mar. 31–Apr. 2
Myths & Hymns	Apr. 21–23

American Idiot

Music by Green Day
Lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong
Book by Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer
Browning Mainstage Theatre
Oct. 7–9, 2022

American Idiot follows the exhilarating journey of young Americans as they struggle to find meaning in a post-9/11 world, borne along by Green Day's electrifying score. The rock musical draws on all the songs from “American Idiot,” plus material that did not make the album, plus a handful of numbers from Green Day's Grammy-winning album, “21st Century Breakdown.”

Sueño

Translated and adapted by José Rivera
From the play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Emerson Studio Theatre
Nov. 4–13, 2022

Sueño is Obie Award–winning playwright José Rivera’s sharp translation and adaptation of Calderón de la Barca’s Golden Age classic Life Is a Dream. Sueño follows the life of young Prince Segismundo, heir to the Spanish throne, who is imprisoned at birth when astrologers predicted his reign as king would result in the country’s ruin. When his father King Basilio finds his own life ending without a legitimate heir, he releases Segismundo and places him on the throne. If Segismundo is gentle, he will be allowed to reign. If he is as barbaric as the stars predicted, he'll be sent back to his imprisonment and told that his brief moment of freedom and power was only a dream. In this brisk, contemporary adaptation, Rivera asks the question that haunted Calderón: If life is a dream, who is dreaming us?

Seminar

By Theresa Rebeck
Stage III
Dec. 2–11, 2022

In Seminar, a provocative comedy from Pulitzer Prize–nominee Theresa Rebeck, four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard, an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon, and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting comedy.

A Bright Room Called Day

By Tony Kushner
Emerson Studio Theatre
Feb. 17–19, 2023

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angels in America comes this powerful portrayal of individual dissolution and resolution in the face of political catastrophe. A Bright Room Called Day centers on a group of Berlin artists and the changes in their lives as Nazism rises in Germany. The audacious play urges us to contend with the present as it narrates a story set in the early 1930s.

Rain and Zoe Save the World

By Crystal Skillman
Original Music by Bobby Cronin
Emerson Studio Theatre
Mar. 3–5, 2023

Two teenage climate activists embark on an impulsive motorcycle journey to join a group of oil protesters. What begins as two young environmentalists’ longing to belong to something greater than themselves gives way to their discovering that the true danger in this world might just be growing up. This brand new play is a funny, sincere and profoundly moving adventure about the ethics of standing up for what you believe, whatever the cost.

Mud

By María Irene Fornés
Stage III
Mar. 31–Apr. 2, 2023

A quintessential Fornes play, Mud won the OBIE Award for Best New Play in 1984. It is one of the playwright’s many explorations into humanity's darker side. In it, Mae seeks to escape the basic life she has been living with Lloyd through education. She befriends Henry, who offers to teach her, but he has a stroke and is forced to remain in the care of Mae and Lloyd. Mud challenges audiences with its uncompromising look at poverty, gender, and illiteracy.

Myths & Hymns

Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel
Browning Mainstage Theatre
April 21–23, 2023

In his song cycle, Myths & Hymns, Guettel paints an emotional landscape of faith and yearning. The lyrics were inspired by Greek mythology and a nineteenth-century Presbyterian hymnal; the musical vocabulary sweeps from romantic art song and rock to Latin, gospel and R&B. Myths & Hymns elucidates our fantastic desire to transcend earthly bounds, our intrinsic need to connect with something or someone greater in our restless search for enlightenment.

Undergraduate Majors and Minors

To complete a minor in theatre, students must take a minimum of 18 credit hours from the courses below. All credit must be completed at Webster. Courses to fulfill a requirement for any major cannot also be used to fulfill a requirement for the minor in theatre.

Theatre Courses

THEA 1050 Theatre Appreciation (3 hours) — GCP Arts Appreciation/Written Communication
THEA 1080 Studio Acting (3 hours) — GCP Arts Appreciation/Oral Communications
THEA 2100 Introduction to Theatre Design (3 hours)
THEA 2030 History of Theatre: Greeks to Elizabethan — GCP Roots of Culture/Written Communication
THEA 2040 History of Theatre: Restoration to 1915 (3 hours) — GCP Roots of Culture/Written Communication
THEA 2050 History of Theatre: 1915 to Present — GCP Roots of Culture/Written Communication
THEA 2060 Introduction to Dramaturgy and Play Analysis — GCP Arts Appreciation/Written Communication
THEA 2080 Studio Acting II (3 hours) — GCP Arts Appreciation/Oral Communications
THEA 3040 Topics in Theatre (3 hours) Repeatable with different titles
THEA 3070 Creative Dramatics: Social Issues (3 hours)
THEA 4060 Advanced Dramaturgy Seminar (3 hours)
MUTH 1030 History of American Musical Theatre (3 hours)
ENGL 4150 Shakespeare (3 hours)

Additional Information

Minor in Theatre

Theatre Minor Advisor — Doug Finlayson, finlaydo@webster.edu

Playbill

Explore this detailed introduction to our programs.

Faculty

Discover our esteemed faculty and how to contact them.

Theatre Facilities

Learn about the Conservatory's classrooms and three performance spaces.

Apply to Webster's Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts

All future Webster Conservatory students follow a three-step process. (Note: The Conservatory does not require a video or prescreening.)

1: Apply to Webster

Application may be made through our website at webster.edu/apply, or you may apply through Common App or COALITION App.

After applying, you will receive email with a form link.

2: Submit Form and Fee

Use link in email to submit the Fine and Performing Arts Student Assessment Request Form and $30 fee for the Conservatory. You will be contacted by Patti Baygents with next step information to schedule a date and time for your review or interview.

3: Schedule Audition/Interview

To schedule your audition or interview at Webster, please go to Webster's Conservatory Auditions.

(Note: Accepted does not take the place of a Conservatory audition or interview.)

If you have any questions regarding the Conservatory or the audition or review process, please contact Patti Baygents, Audition Coordinator for the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts, at pbaygents80@webster.edu or 314-246-4216.

Use of Acceptd is not required to be admitted to the program and does not take the place of a Conservatory audition or interview.

The Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts is working in association with the online digital audition/portfolio company Acceptd. The use of Acceptd allows students to submit perusal materials to Webster and other programs. Although we view all postings to the Acceptd site, students interested in the Conservatory must schedule an official Webster audition or interview for the program to which they are applying. Acceptd does not take the place of a Conservatory audition or interview.

To schedule your audition or interview at Webster, please go to Webster's Conservatory Auditions page.