Professional Affiliations

Students benefit from the department's active affiliation with the professional community and by a required industry internship in the senior year. To various sectors of the profession, these activities demonstrate the value of our students’ education, while providing a segue between undergraduate and post-graduate experiences.

The specific relationship between the SJSU Theatre program and the Silicon Valley region can be seen in the formative and ongoing role the university plays in the development of a South Bay performing arts community. SJSU Theatre alumni, students, faculty, and staff have produced significant achievements in the region as theatre and film professionals, teachers, community activists, entrepreneurs, and arts administrators. Our graduates help build and lead a distinctively regional artistic, imaginative, creative community. The emergence of a downtown renaissance in San José is partly attributable to the fertile, ongoing relationship between the university theatre program and the culture of the South Bay.

The Hammer Theatre

Our alliance with the award-winning Hammer Theatre provides students with access to professional instruction and experience in the theatre.  Students will also have the opportunity to pursue internships in acting, directing, dramaturgy, stage management, production design, development, arts marketing and more.

Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Started in 1969 the Kennedy Center American College Theater (KCACTF) is a national theater program involving 18,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide. The goals of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival are:

• To encourage, recognize, and celebrate the finest and most diverse work produced in university and college theater programs
• To provide opportunities for participants to develop their theater skills and insight, and achieve professionalism
• To improve the quality of college and university theater in America
• To encourage colleges and universities to give distinguished productions of new plays, especially those written by students; the classics, revitalized or newly conceived; and experimental works

The KCACTF honors excellence of overall production and offers student artists individual recognition through awards and scholarships in playwriting, acting, criticism, directing, and design. 

Region 7 contains states  of the Northwest: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming, along with Hawaii and northern sections of Nevada and California

TheatreWorks Silcon Valley

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is a Tony Award-Winning professional nonprofit theatre company in the South Bay. Students have opportunities to intern in different areas of theatre through our internship program.