Skip to main content

Update on the Future of Musical Theatre at UTEP


October 20, 2023

The University of Texas at El Paso has formed an internal committee charged to develop a plan for the future of musical theater at UTEP. Goals for the committee include increasing access to musical theater for all UTEP students, improving and expanding professional development and educational opportunities for students majoring in theater and music, and continuing to provide quality musical theater entertainment for the El Paso community. The plan will be submitted for review and approval by the dean, the provost and president. The committee will include representation from UTEP Dinner Theatre staff, the College of Liberal Arts faculty and staff, and staff from the Division of Student Affairs. The committee is being chaired by Cherry Duke, professor of practice in music, and expects to complete its work before the end of this semester.

 

October 4, 2023

Friends of UTEP Dinner Theatre:

Because you care about the future of UT El Paso’s musical productions, we wanted to take a moment to drop you a note to clarify the status of musical theater at UTEP.

Musical theater at UTEP is not going away. The same professional-grade musicals, produced for decades by UTEP Dinner Theatre, will continue at UTEP for seasons to come.

With a natural transition in leadership at the Dinner Theatre this semester, we believe now is the time to plan for the future of musical productions at UTEP. How can our efforts to create culturally-rich performances better advance UTEP’s educational and service missions? Over the next few months, the Dinner Theatre and the College of Liberal Arts, which oversees the Dinner Theatre, will be working to create a larger vision for musical productions at UTEP.

Questions we are examining include:

  • How can we make sure UTEP’s theater arts students fully benefit from working with the professionals in the Dinner Theatre on these productions? How do we better integrate the productions into our theater curriculum?
  • How can we increase affordable access to the performing arts for both our students and the El Paso community at large?
  • What is the optimal internal structure at UTEP to provide sustainable support for musical theater moving forward?

After we work through these and other questions, we will announce plans for the future of musical theater at UTEP. We will keep offering musical shows that will serve the goals of educating and preparing our students for future jobs in theater as well as providing entertainment of high quality to our audiences. Although we haven’t set a hard deadline, we expect this planning will take several months to complete.

Musical theater lives at UTEP. Once we have finished our planning, we’ll drop you a note to let you know all the details of the next generation of UTEP musical theater.

Thank you for your continued support of the arts and of UTEP!

Anadeli Bencomo, Ph.D.
Dean, UTEP College of Liberal Arts

 

John Wiebe, Ph.D.
Provost