News

RIT students will have a chance to show their talents and compete for cash prizes during Ovation: RIT Performing Arts Showcase from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 3 in Ingle Auditorium in the Student Alumni Union

More students involved in performing arts are currently enrolled at RIT than ever before. This year’s class includes a record 482 new students who received Performing Arts Scholarships.

A 750-seat music performance theater will be constructed on the RIT campus to offer a venue for musical theater productions. The new building will be the first of two theaters in a performing arts center. The first phase will be an iconic building with more than 40,000 square feet of space, with anticipated completion in 2025.

As students head to class each day, a new showpiece is rising at the center of RIT’s campus. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED)—which was first announced in 2017 and funded in part by a $50 million gift from alumnus Austin McChord ’09—is a multi-use complex that will showcase RIT’s technology, the arts, and design. The SHED is on track to open this fall.

Three RIT students involved in last semester’s production of Everybody brought home awards from the Region II Kennedy Center College Theatre Fest, held Jan. 17-22.

The Department of Performing Arts at RIT/NTID presents a celebration of the career of Director of Dance Thomas Warfield in “Twenty-five Years Through Movement and Space,” Feb. 24-26. The production honors Warfield’s 25 years as a senior lecturer and director of Dance at RIT/NTID and features dances from Warfield’s creative journey.

During the 15 weeks between spring and fall semester, RIT students are finding ways to embrace new challenges. Some are taking the stage and performing. Others are winning club championships. For many, summer is a time to get work experience and participate in research projects, traveling abroad, and helping others while pursuing their passions.

The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) and the renovated Wallace Library will reopen in less than a year. Work has begun to schedule the fall semester classes that will be held for the first time in the SHED complex, and Joe Loffredo, RIT associate vice president for Academic Affairs and registrar, is leading the effort to assign the classrooms in Wallace Library.

Members of the RIT Board of Trustees and President Munson recently took a walking tour of the Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED). The $120 million complex stretches from Wallace Library to Monroe Hall and will include the Brooks H. Bower Maker Showcase, the Sklarsky Glass Box Theater, and music and dance studios. The SHED’s focus on hands-on learning extends to the 27 new classrooms—five extra-large learning spaces designed for active learning and 22 regular-sized flexible classrooms in the renovated Wallace Library. 

Joe Beard, a legendary blues guitarist and vocalist from Rochester, is scheduled to perform with students from RIT’s “Harmonica and the Blues” class from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 at University Gallery in Booth Hall.

The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED) will look like nothing else on the RIT campus when construction ends next year.

The 2022 Deaf Play Creators Festival, which celebrates the performances of Deaf playwrights’ films, will be held Friday, Oct. 14, and Friday, Oct. 21, in the Wegmans Theater at RIT MAGIC Spell Studios.