The future of theater arts at Dominican University is uncertain. As of January 2025, the university no longer admits new theater arts majors or minors, but courses and production opportunities will continue throughout the 2025-2026 academic year.
Krista Hansen, chair and professor of Dominican’s theater arts program, said the university has paused admittance to the program at this juncture.
“Since the pandemic, enrollments in the program have been very low and it’s just become unsustainable,” Hansen said. “I saw this coming and tried to do what I could to offset it, but this is the situation we’re in.”
Hansen, who has been a full-time faculty member at Dominican for 22 years, said many factors have contributed to the program’s decline and include issues on the campus level as well as local, state and national headwinds. However, efforts are underway by a committed group of faculty and staff to preserve theater in some form at the university.
“Theater arts as a standalone program is probably not going to move forward in the same way that it did before, but I think there’s enough interdisciplinary activity and interest on campus to keep theater in the curriculum and keep theater as part of the community,” Hansen said.
Part of the curriculum for theater arts majors and minors, the Theatre Arts Lab Series consists of three student productions per year: a classical play, a contemporary play and a musical. This gives students the chance to work on a wide variety of genres, time periods and styles over the course of a single season.
Those three productions, which have yet to be announced, will still take place during the 2025-2026 school year.
According to Hansen, all students are welcome to participate in productions at Dominican, regardless of their major or minor.
“Theater and the arts should be shared, so I’ve always tried to encourage everyone to participate in some way if they can,” she said. “I truly believe in the arts as a transformative learning approach.”
Hansen said the skills that students learn during their time in Dominican’s theater program are invaluable.
“One of the things that I find incredibly rewarding are the alums who tell me about how they continue to use the skills, and how they continue to put theater and the elements of theater into their lives, whether or not they’re working in the arts,” she said. “I’ve always been a cheerleader of the skills that theater provides over everything else.”
One alumna who was disappointed to hear that the theatre department is no longer accepting majors or minors is Jim Kozyra, who graduated from Dominican in 2006.
A mainstay in Chicago theatre and improv, Kozyra said just about every significant moment and accomplishment in his career can be traced back to Krista Hansen and Dominican’s theatre program.
“I made professional connections there that opened doors outside of DU and learned the skills needed to open my own when in uncharted waters, and in areas extending far beyond the theatre,” he said.
Kozyra said one of the greatest strengths of Dominican’s theatre program has always been its intimate size.
“When I was choosing a school, the thing that pushed DU over the top was knowing that I would get significantly more time on stage than with other programs,” he said. “At the time, schools like Northwestern and DePaul didn’t let students perform until their junior year. DU was the place where I could perform immediately. The best way to learn a thing is to actually do the thing and DU gave students that chance immediately.”
Another alumna who was surprised by the news about the theatre department is Robert Reeves, who attended Dominican from 2008-2011. Reeves said Professor Bill Jenkins and Krista Hansen created a safe and nurturing community where he found his niche stage managing.
“Dominican’s theatre arts program helped me go from someone who was interested in theatre to someone who was passionate about it,” Reeves said. “Within a semester I went from the classroom to stage crew.”
Although Reeves is now a police officer, rather than working in the arts, he still finds the skills he learned as a theatre minor at Dominican applicable.
“Being a stage manager is interdisciplinary,” Reeves said. “You’re managing a lot of moving parts and working with a lot of personalities, and that’s absolutely something that translates to my job as a police officer.”
In spite of the changes that are occurring, Hansen said she will continue to try to teach students through the arts at Dominican.
“Theater is important,” she said. “So how do we keep that going even if the program itself doesn’t function or look the same? Right now, there are a lot of questions to be answered.”
