Theatre Education and Musical Performance at the University of Kansas: Inside ‘Songs for a New World’

When the curtains rise at Murphy Hall in Lawrence, Kansas, something more significant than a seasonal opening takes place. Each University Theatre production at the University of Kansas functions as a working classroom, where students rehearse, design, stage-manage, and perform under the guidance of faculty and working professionals. This season, that process begins with “Songs for a New World,” Jason Robert Brown’s breakthrough off-Broadway musical, presented by the KU Department of Theatre & Dance in collaboration with the School of Music.

For students weighing where to study theatre in the USA, productions like this offer a transparent look at how a university program converts coursework into professional-grade experience. Below, we examine what this production reveals about theatre education, musical performance training, and the practical opportunities available to students at the University of Kansas.

Evaluate programs by their seasons: A university’s production calendar tells you a great deal about its training priorities. Explore the University of Kansas Department of Theatre & Dance to see how its annual season is structured to develop student skills from the first semester onward.

Why “Songs for a New World” Is a Smart Choice for Student Performers

Jason Robert Brown wrote “Songs for a New World” when he was in his mid-twenties, and the piece premiered off-Broadway as his breakthrough work. It is structured as a theatrical song cycle rather than a conventional book musical: a series of vignettes, each built around a character standing at a moment of decision. Director and KU lecturer Michelle Miller, who leads the production, describes it as being about “that instant when everything changes and you must choose who you will become.”

That framing matters for student actors. The show’s themes — love, coping with grief, and the longing for a new identity — resonate with performers who are themselves navigating a formative stage of life. Miller notes that each vignette stands alone while echoing the others, capturing moments when the world as we know it ends and something new begins. For young performers still discovering their artistic voices, a piece written from a youthful perspective offers both accessibility and a genuine artistic challenge.

A Collaborative Model: Where Theatre Meets Musical Performance

One of the most instructive aspects of this production is its cross-departmental structure. Performers are drawn from the KU Department of Theatre & Dance and the School of Music, alongside students majoring in other fields. This mirrors the realities of professional musical theatre, where performers routinely collaborate with musicians, conductors, and music directors who approach the material from different training backgrounds.

Live accompaniment strengthens that lesson. Rather than performing to pre-recorded tracks, the cast works with a professional rhythm section: musical director and accompanist Jeremy Watson on piano, KU professor of bass Jeff Harshbarger, Kansas City-based musician Bradford Athey on violin and guitar, and Lawrence percussionist and music educator Steve Riley on drums. Learning to phrase with a live ensemble, adjust tempo in real time, and communicate with instrumentalists is a core musical performance skill that recorded tracks simply cannot teach.

Expanded Casting Creates More Onstage Opportunities

Brown’s score was written for four voices. KU’s production expands the cast substantially, a deliberate decision that increases the number of students who gain meaningful stage experience. The ensemble includes theatre majors as well as students in pre-nursing, journalism, English, digital marketing communications, and film & media studies — a reminder that university theatre in the USA often remains open to non-majors, giving students across disciplines a venue to develop performance and collaboration skills.

The choreography, developed by freelance choreographer and recent KU graduate Anna Tové Shelton, spans a variety of dance styles, giving performers exposure to multiple movement vocabularies within a single production. That versatility becomes a competitive advantage in auditions after graduation.

Backstage Education: Design, Technology, and Stage Management

Theatre education does not stop at the edge of the stage. This production places students in key creative roles: a junior in theatre design serves as scenic designer, and a sophomore in theatre performance and psychology stage-manages the show. They work alongside faculty and staff mentors, including costume shop supervisor and lecturer Erin Barnett and lecturer and technical coordinator Ann Sitzman.

This apprenticeship-style model is worth noting for prospective students. In commercial theatre, early-career designers and stage managers often wait years for responsibilities of this scale. Within a university production program, students can accumulate a portfolio of realized work before they graduate — credits, production photos, and professional references that carry real weight in the job market.

What the Creative Team Teaches About Career Paths

The production’s leadership illustrates the range of careers a theatre education can support. Director Michelle Miller’s career spans filmmaking, vocal performance, theatre creation, and education: seven Emmy nominations for her work with Rocky Mountain PBS, performances with the Boston Pops under John Williams, appearances at Lincoln Center, Fenway Park, and the Vatican, and collaborations with Tony-winning composers. Her greatest love, she says, is teaching.

For students, that example reframes the question from “Can I make a living in theatre?” to “Which of the many theatre-adjacent careers fits me?” Performance, music direction, choreography, design, stage management, arts education, and media production all appear within this single creative team. Consider the full ecosystem: when you research programs, study faculty biographies carefully. The career paths your professors have traveled are often the paths their students will follow. Reviewing faculty profiles through the department is one of the most efficient ways to assess where a degree might lead you.

Institutional Depth: A Century of Theatre Education at KU

Context matters when choosing a program. The University Theatre is the production wing of KU’s Department of Theatre & Dance, which traces its theatre program to 1923 and merged with the Department of Dance in 2018. KU Theatre & Dance is one of three departments in the School of the Arts, housed within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences — a structure that encourages collaboration between the arts, humanities, sciences, and international and interdisciplinary studies.

For students, that liberal arts placement has practical benefits. Double majors and minors are easier to arrange, general coursework strengthens communication and critical thinking, and graduates enter the workforce with a broader academic foundation than narrow training alone provides. The ensemble of this very production — a pre-nursing student, a journalism major, a digital marketing student performing alongside theatre majors — demonstrates how the university’s structure supports that flexibility.

Modern Access: In-Person and Livestreamed Performances

This production also reflects how theatre programs are adapting their presentation models. Along with in-person performances in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre at Murphy Hall, selected performances are livestreamed, extending the audience to family members, alumni, and prospective students who cannot travel to Lawrence.

For prospective students and their families, livestreams are a low-cost research tool. Watching a full production online lets you assess the polish of student work, the professionalism of the staging, and the energy of the ensemble before you ever set foot on campus.

Practical Steps for Prospective Theatre Students

If you are considering a theatre or musical performance pathway at the University of Kansas or a comparable program in the USA, take these concrete steps:

• See student work live or online. Attend a University Theatre production or stream one. Assess whether the quality of performance and production matches your goals.
• Study faculty credentials. Directors, music directors, and designers who remain active professionals bring current industry standards into the rehearsal room.
• Look for casting access. Programs that expand casts — as KU has done with this song cycle — create more onstage opportunities per student.
• Check backstage pipelines. Ask whether undergraduates design, stage-manage, and assistant-direct, or whether those roles are reserved for graduate students and staff.
• Consider interdisciplinary options. If you want to pair theatre with nursing, journalism, business, or film, confirm that the university’s academic structure supports it.

Ready to explore your options? Review the admission requirements and audition expectations for the Department of Theatre & Dance, then submit your application through the University of Kansas admissions office. Preparing two contrasting songs and monologues early in the process positions you well for competitive review.

The Broader Value of University Theatre in the USA

Productions like “Songs for a New World” also serve the surrounding community. Northeast Kansas audiences gain access to high-quality musical theatre at accessible prices, with the University Theatre season funded in part by Student Senate fees and supported by community partners such as Truity Credit Union. Students, in turn, perform for real audiences — a pressure and a privilege that classroom exercises alone cannot replicate.

That reciprocal relationship is a hallmark of strong public university arts programs. The community receives culture; the students receive audiences. If you live within reach of Lawrence, Kansas, attending a performance supports that ecosystem and gives you a firsthand look at the program in action. Ticket and scheduling information for University Theatre productions is available through the Murphy Hall box office and the theatre department’s website.

Take the Next Step Toward a Theatre Education

A season opener is a small window into a large system. Behind these performances stands a department established more than a century ago, a faculty of working professionals, a design program that hands students real responsibility, and a university structure that lets performers, musicians, and scholars train side by side.

Here is how to move forward: schedule a campus visit to tour the performance facilities at Murphy Hall; contact the Department of Theatre & Dance with questions about auditions and curriculum; and, when you are ready, begin your application to the University of Kansas. If you have attended a KU production or are comparing theatre programs across the USA, share your questions and experiences in the comments below — the details you learn from others often shape the best decisions.