Theatre is a collaborative art, combining the disciplines of writing, visual and spatial design, and the embodied rhetoric of acting.  The Barnard College Theatre major, a joint program with the Columbia College major in Drama and Theatre Arts, takes an integrative approach to theatre and performance studies, engaging the complex interaction between creation and critique.  The major program at once develops a keen sense of the practices of acting, directing, design, and playwriting, while introducing students to the dynamic range of world performance traditions.  Taking advantage of a wide variety of studio coursework, of the Department's production season in the Minor Latham Playhouse, as well as of a rich panoply of theatre studies courses, students' creative work develops in dialogue with critical inquiry into the literature, history, culture, and theory of western and nonwestern performance, typically combining coursework in Theatre with study in other fields, such as anthropology, architecture, art history, classics, dance, film, languages, literature, music, and philosophy.