Circle in the Square/Eckerd College BFA
Combine a liberal arts education with conservatory training.
The BFA degree program offers qualified students the opportunity to combine a liberal arts education at Eckerd College with two years of professional conservatory theatre training at Circle in the Square Theatre School, located in the Broadway district of New York City.
The Eckerd Theatre Discipline offers a unique 2 + 2 program through an agreement with Circle in the Square Theatre School. Candidates may earn one of two degrees granted by Eckerd College: either a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Theatre or a BFA in Musical Theatre.
A student will follow one of two paths to earn a BFA in Theatre / BFA in Musical Theatre.
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NYC
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Start at Eckerd,
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Start at Circle,
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Students who successfully complete their first two years of study at Eckerd College and who are accepted by audition to Circle in the Square Theatre School will then complete their junior and senior years at Circle. | Students who transfer to Eckerd with two full years of study (with passing grades and two-year certificate) from Circle in the Square Theatre School, either in Acting or in Musical Theatre, may pursue a BFA degree in Theatre or a BFA degree in Musical Theatre. |
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While at Eckerd, BFA students can continue their theatre education with these courses
Basic Acting | Human Instrument | Acting for the Camera | Long Form Improv |
Sketch Comedy | Comedy & Laughter | Directing | Theatre Production |
Design Basics | Stagecraft | Lighting and Sound Design | Animals in Performance |
Performance & the Environment |
*In addition, students can also take creative writing, music, visual arts, and film studies courses.
Acting, Directing, and Writing Opportunities
Eckerd College Theatre offers two to three faculty-directed productions per year, with additional student-led productions. Our 2023-2024 season includes Monty Python’s Edukational Show, Children’s Letters to God, Eleemosynary, and Spring Awakening. Students can propose to direct a play or musical (recent examples: Heathers: The Musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and the upcoming Children’s Letters to God) and do a staged reading of original plays. Every two years Eckerd participates in a Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) performance of 5-minute plays by playwrights from around the world as part of a biennial worldwide theatre initiative. Another Man’s Trash, Eckerd’s long form improv troupe, performs on and off campus. There are opportunities for acting work in student films through the Eckerd’s Film Studies program as well.
Acting Opportunities Off Campus
American Stage and freeFall Theatre are professional theatre companies in St. Petersburg, along with St. Petersburg City Theatre, the local community theatre. Theatres in Tampa include Stageworks, Jobsite, and Powerstories Theatre. Theatres in Sarasota include Urbanite Theatre and Florida Studio Theatre. Eckerd students have also worked with Disney World in Orlando. Eckerd Theatre has an internship with Norwegian Cruise Lines, a company that is interested in offering more opportunities for Eckerd students.
Cynthia TottenProfessor of TheatreSince 1992, Professor Totten has been teaching stage movement, acting, directing, and performance courses at Eckerd College. Eckerd directing credits include Failure: A Love Story, Stupid F***ing Bird, Eurydice, The Tempest, Fuddy Meers, Passion Play (Part One), The Gamester, Iphigenia, Rain. Some Fish. No Elephants., Our Town, The Dining Room, As You Like It, The Boys Next Door, and A Streetcar Named Desire. She received Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Awards for Excellence in Direction for Iphigenia and for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During the summer, she works as an Artist-in-Residence/Guest Director at the Central Coast Shakespeare Festival in San Luis Obispo, California, where she directed As You Like It, Almost, Maine, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Tempest, The Gamester, Treasure Island, Richard III, Macbeth, Cyrano de Bergerac, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice, and performed the role of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Professor Totten studied with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, and holds a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification from Ananda Expanding Light Retreat near Nevada City, California. She has served as Director of Eckerd College’s London Study Centre, where she taught The British Seminar and Acting: Shakespeare. Professor Totten received the 2016 Lloyd W. Chapin Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Art and the 2017 Robert A. Staub Distinguished Teacher Award.
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Rick TetraultTechnical DirectorRick hails from Lake Worth, Florida where he started his theatre career at age 16 as a scenic electrician and carpenter at the Lake Worth Playhouse, one of the country’s preeminent community theatres. During his years at FAU as an undergrad he worked at such theatres as The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, The Theatre Club of the Palm Beaches, and Stagedoor Manor Theatre Camp in New York. After a term in the US Air Force, where he worked with Air Force Entertainment, he returned to South Florida as the Assistant Technical Director at Palm Beach Community College. During his three years at PBCC he discovered his love of working with the students, and in 2000 he went back to FAU to pursue his Masters degree. Upon graduating he spent three years teaching all things technical in Louisiana, but could not stay away from his beloved Florida for long, and now he’s here at Eckerd and loving every minute of it.
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Antonia KruegerVisiting Assistant ProfessorAntonia Krueger received her Ph.D. in Theatre from The Ohio State University, where she was the first person in theatre ever to be awarded the highly competitive Presidential Fellowship for her dissertation research on the career of actress Jessica Tandy. She has an M.A. in Communication (Theatre) from Indiana State University, and an M.A. in English as a Second Language (focus in Psychology) from the University of Minnesota. She has worked in theatre and film as a dramaturg, playwright, theatre critic, voice and text coach, actor, director, costumer, and arts administrator. Her auto/biographical performance project Pucelle was produced by the Expanded Arts Theatre Company in New York City. She was also a founding company member for the Great River Shakespeare Festival (GRSF) in Minnesota, where she served as the first Education and Administration Coordinator, and was a founding judge for the Theatre Tampa Bay professional theatre awards. She is a member of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and of the Voice and Speech Teachers Association (VASTA). At Eckerd, she teaches Performance and the Environment, Animals and Performance, and Oceans in Performance. Current creative and research interests include animal aesthetics and internatural media.
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Kyle RansbottomVisiting Assistant Professor of TheatreKyle Ransbottom is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatrical Design at Eckerd College. He is also a Scenic and Prop designer based in Florida. He received a MFA in scenic design from Purdue University in 2017. After moving to FL, he designed scenery and props for venues such as Garden Theatre, Orlando REP, and Eckerd College. Beyond designing for theatre, Kyle works frequently in themed entertainment. He worked for Universal Creative, fabricating props and set dressing for Islands of Adventure and Universal Beijing. He worked as a technical designer on projects for Walt Disney Imagineering. He also managed non-ice properties for Gaylord Palm’s ICE! 2019 and fabricated props for clients such as Cirque du Soleil. At Eckerd, Kyle teaches courses in design, theatre history and theatre production. |
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