News
School of Performing Arts

RIT students, faculty, and staff will contribute music, dance, comedy, poetry, photojournalism, and more during the 12th annual Rochester Fringe Festival, which begins Tuesday, Sept. 12, and runs through Sept. 23 in downtown Rochester.

In order to accommodate a surge in students engaged in performing arts, an official groundbreaking was held today for RIT’s new music performance theater, the first major theater project in the Rochester area in decades. The three-story, 40,000-square-foot building will consist of a 750-seat theater primarily to be used for musical theater productions.

Nearly one in six of the more than 3,300 first-year and transfer undergraduates this year received a Performing Arts Scholarship from RIT. That brings the total number of scholars to more than 1,800 in the five years since the program began. The program encourages high school students involved in performing arts to continue their passions at RIT.

Calling all potential cast members, stage managers, designers, dancers, costumers, theater technicians, and more: RIT’s first “Full Season Audition Debut” is set for 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Aug. 30 in Ingle Auditorium.

This May, students from RIT participated in the Performing Arts – Global Music study abroad program. During their stay on RIT Croatia’s Dubrovnik campus, students took part in an intensive course called Studies in World Music. The course is designed to explore selected music cultures with an emphasis on music from Central and Southeastern Europe.

The 2023-2024 theatrical season featuring a partnership between RIT’s School of Performing Arts and NTID's Department of Performing Arts will include a celebration of Deaf rap and hip hop, an adaptation of Hamlet, a multimedia dance production, and several immersive theatrical performances, among others.

Many of the RIT students who received the first Performing Arts Scholarships four years ago are preparing to take the stage one last time as they graduate this week.

Inside Higher Ed features RIT’s Performing Arts Scholarship program and talks to student Mia Clarizio, School of Performing Arts Director Erica Haskell, and RIT President David Munson.

An afternoon featuring 25 student bands or individual artists is set for Sunday, April 16, in two venues at RIT. Called “RIT Unlabeled Music Festival,” the genres represented include electronic dance music, funk, pop, rock, rap, metal, grunge, punk, fusion, and jazz.

Sandeep Das, a Grammy-winning musician and internationally known master of the Indian tabla, will perform at 7:30 p.m. April 14 at RIT. Das is the founder of Harmony and Universality through Music (HUM), a nonprofit organization in India that promotes global understanding through music performance and provides learning opportunities and scholarships for visually impaired children with artistic potential.

WXXI Connections talks to Michael Ruhling, professor of performing arts, about Beethoven.

RIT’s University Gallery is the perfect venue for an upcoming play where much of the plot takes place in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ordinary Days runs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, through Sunday, April 2, in the gallery, in Booth Hall.