Arts Education

Student Life values equity-based models, critical thinking, shared experiences, community participation, and self-care practices. Through engagement with our office and our programs, students have access to wide-ranging experiences and multiple perspectives, allowing them to be more engaged citizens of our campus, local, national, and global communities. We provide students with tools, resources, and experiences to assist exploration of their identities, examine social structures, and develop a strong sense of self.

The GMT adds arts education principles and methods to Student Life and to Barnard. The student-centered production process engaged by the GMT mirrors the values of both our office and the college, and brings additional elements of creativity and innovation. Arts education is regarded as an effective and powerful means for developing students’ emotional intelligence. Not only do our students learn concrete skills in decision making, team dynamics, and accountability through working in and with the GMT, students have a space to explore identities, relationships, and social issues through artistic expression and collaboration. Participating in the creative process of choosing, casting, and designing a play or musical; selecting music and set list for a voice performance; choreographing a dance performance; hosting an open mic night; even choosing a movie for a study break -- each program, and each step of the program, involves intentional consideration and care. Guidance from GMT staff is provided throughout each process, and we are thus able to fuse together arts education, student development, and leadership education.

Our theatre serves as a space for creativity and development for a range of student groups including our various comedy troupes, our spoken word slam teams, as well as our performance groups that put on established plays or write their own. Students take on a variety of roles when interacting within the theatre; the GMT works with playwrights, actors, directors, producers, choreographers, stage managers, lighting designers, sound designers, costume designers, build crews, and more. The GMT provides students with intentional learning opportunities and holistic approach that would be hard to find elsewhere on campus or in the New York City arts scene. Overall, we ensure that their involvement includes more than just the act of doing but also one of learning via both process and production.

The Glicker-Milstein Theatre (GMT) is a black box performance space under the purview of Barnard College Student Life. Over the course of the academic year the GMT offers student performance groups a professionally run space in which to explore works, artistic theories and practices. Centering on co-curricular arts education, the GMT offers multiple learning, leadership, and mentorship opportunities to students and student staff who participate in the variety of programs and events hosted by Barnard Student Life and the GMT.

The Glicker-Milstein Theatre is equipped with a theatrical lighting system with over a hundred standard instruments installed on the lighting grid. A repertory plot including channels is available upon request. The theatre is also equipped with simulcast video capabilities, an audio monitor system spanning all of the theatre spaces, acoustical wall panels and a theatrical sound system that provides exceptional coverage of the theatre space. The GMT also offers a projector and automated screen that is ideal for presentations or screening movies.

Support spaces for the GMT include the theatre lobby, two fully equipped dressing rooms with showers, the Prop room, the GMT Shop, props storage space and the use of the Dasha Epstein Theatre Lab/Green Room during performances.

During the summer months the GMT hosts the Glicker-Milstein Summer Theatre Festival. Now approaching its third season, the GMSTF fosters the producing of works that have meaningful genres/themes prevalent to gender, race, social justice, sexuality, and/or body politics, and are  related to the missions of Barnard College.

For more information regarding the Glicker-Milstein Theatre, including schedules and technical fees, please feel free to e-mail: GMT@barnard.edu