All Graduate Students in the MFA Theatre Design Program are required to have a computer, software, and other equipment, prior to their use in programmatic classes. As designers in the theatre, these items are standard and essential, and will allow for success in your chosen field.
The department of theatre has a dedicated iMac computer lab that is accessible by graduate and undergraduate students. However, most individual work will be done in provided studio workspaces, in tech, at home, and while traveling. The dedicated graduate workspaces include peripherals such as plotters, printers (3D and 2D), scanners, engravers, lighting/projection/sound studios, spray booths, and more..
The following list of equipment and software is required by classes in the MFA Program.
These items are to be supplied by the student at the student’s expense.
Laptop, Windows or Apple
- Minimum Requirements: able to run current Adobe Suite, Vectorworks, and Autocad.
- Adobe Suite will be provided to you at no charge while in the program.
- Lighting, Scenic, Sound/Media Students must have Vectorworks, which is free for students.
- Scenic Students must have Autocad (free for students)
- Sound/Media students must have a computer capable of video production.
A Digital Camera capable of using interchanging lenses (required for Fall of the second year).
- We are partial to Nikon and Cannon but any good brand will work. Sensor of 20 Megapixel or higher
- A zoom lens or fix focus lenses ranging from 18-200mm
- 2 Memory cards 64gb or higher
- A good quality monopod
iPad and Apple Pencil (required for Fall of the first year).
- Required for Costume, and Scenic.
- Recommended for Lighting and Sound/Media
- Procreate software
- iPad must be 10” or greater (iPad minis will not be allowed for content creation).
Costume students: Students will be required to purchase high quality art supplies for class projects, as needed. We recommend you start with the following supplies:
- 1 roll of tracing paper/Onion Skin
- Watercolor paper (Arches large sheets of paper- I prefer Cold Press, 140lb or 300lb in natural)
- Set of tube watercolors (Windsor & Newton, Cotman, Grumbacher, Daniel Smith)
- Metal Butcher Tray Paint Palette (I would recommend buying in two sizes)
- Brushes (Round brushes size 40 or 30, and various smaller sizes)
Scenic students: Be prepared to purchase significant amounts of various art supplies and materials for the building of models, paint elevations, prop sketches, and other work product.
Sound/Media students:
- Flat response studio quality headphones.
- Flash/external drives, no smaller than 128GB
- Sound/Media Students will be provided with a Qlab license at no charge while in the program.