Department's Mission Statement

The curricular and extra-curricular activities of the department of performance and communication arts (PCA) are guided by a number of fundamental assumptions:

• all performances are acts of communication, and all acts of communication are performances;

• all humans communicate, and all humans perform;

• performance entails not merely the disingenuous act of faking but more important the creative and constructive act of making;

• communication entails not merely the transmission and reception of messages but more important the community-inducing communion among humans that the transmission and reception of messages makes possible;

• performance and communication are not just acts in which humans sometimes engage but rather the fundamentally humanizing acts that shape who we are and how we negotiate our relationships with others and with the material world in which we live; and

• examination of the basic components of performance and communication theory, when coupled with repeated practice in the art of shaping performances and engaging in communicative acts, enables students to become more effective and ethical producers and more discriminating and critical consumers of performances and other communicative behaviors.

In addition to regular course offerings, the department also regularly sponsors public events, including faculty-directed productions, student-directed productions, showcases and performance hours, faculty and guest lectures, and a variety of workshops related to the intellectual and artistic mission of the department. These events are designed to serve multiple purposes (e.g. to entertain, to inform, to celebrate, to critique, to provoke) and multiple constituencies (e.g., departmental majors and minors, particular communities within the University, the University at large and the North Country community). All events are free and open to the public, and we encourage participation in the shaping and mounting of the department’s season of events.