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This story is part of the Pathways to Placement series, which highlights UNT faculty and staff’s hard work to prepare students in the creative arts for professional success.

UNT’s Department of Dance and Theatre is promoting both shop skills and professional development in a capstone course for theatre design and technology students.

“They do a great job of balancing, giving you opportunities to work in the shops through production and stagecraft courses, but also teaching you how to apply to a job and interview,” said Casey Pitts, a theatre student who graduated in May 2024.

Part of what helped Pitts leave the university “feeling ready to be a part of the professional world” was Design/Tech and the Profession. In this capstone course, theatre design and technology students create resumes, business cards and portfolio websites. They also learn how to file their taxes.

“We want to be the people that we didn’t have when we were in school,” said Laura Berrios, a departmental advisor and visiting lecturer of stage management. “Nobody talked us through these things.”

The class includes a DIY syllabus portion, where students must teach themselves a new skill over the course of the semester and create a syllabus for it. Chosen topics have ranged from video editing to skateboarding.

“We are trying to get them to realize that there are a ton of things you’re going to want to keep learning because our business is ever-changing,” Berrios said. “There’s always new technology coming out.”

Before taking the capstone, students have picked up base skills in Stage Production classes to “get into just about any shop and start learning things,” Berrios said. Students are encouraged to become familiar with multiple stage crew positions to increase their chances of joining productions.

“You could be a stage manager, but if you know how to hang a light, you can get hired to go hang lights,” Berrios said. “As theatrical practitioners, we are doing lots of odd jobs.”

The capstone culminates in the Showcase of Undergraduate Theatre Artists (SOUTA), an event hosted by UNT and held in Dallas every spring. Multiple universities send seniors and recent graduates to display their work to over 50 industry professionals.

“It felt like SOUTA was the accumulation of my entire college career,” Pitts said. “I got a lot of business cards and people still email me with opportunities.”

For technical and design students, their showcase booths range from a table full of costume pieces to a pair of headphones ready to play audio engineering projects.

“Part of the whole class is getting them to realize who they are as individuals,” Berrios said. “They are their own entrepreneurs. They are a small business owner now, so they have to start acting like one.”

To further promote networking, Berrios is adding an industry interview assignment to future capstone classes. Students are encouraged to reach out to someone working in a role they’re interested in.

“A lot of students really love talking to someone in the field, getting actual career advice and just listening to someone say, ‘This is how it started for me. This may or may not be what it is for you, but here’s a possible path,’” Berrios said.