Durham School of the Arts
Our Mission
International Thespian Festival
DSA Theatre is dedicated to collaborative learning environment with high quality education in the performing arts. Our aim is to elicit creative self-expression, critical thinking, and artistry through our theatre course offerings and Mainstage productions as students grow as performers, designers, and stage technicians. We are also committed to producing shows that will delight, entertain and educate audiences. We believe that theatre training should engage students with the experience of theatre from the perspectives from both the practionioner and the audience member, and to be critically responsive to the work.
DSA is an active and dynamic center for arts and academic education. School life at DSA is based on our shared culture of success and an emphasis on tolerance, diversity, personal responsibility, and respect for individual differences.
We are a school like no other. Durham School of the Arts (DSA) is a magnet school founded on the premise of providing our students with an education focused on excellence in the
visual and performing arts and rigorous academics. We believe that since our students are both participants and consumers of the arts, they will be better educated and more informed citizens. As a result, we expect our students to be the leaders and intellectuals of tomorrow.
DSA partners with top tier institutions, such as the Durham Performing Arts Center, Duke University and the American Dance Festival, to expose our students to high caliber guest artists who provide workshops and master classes.
The International Thespian Society (ITS) is the Educational Theatre Association’s student honorary organization. ITS recognizes the achievements of high school and middle school theatre students. Since 1929, EdTA has inducted more than 2 million Thespians into ITS. That number continues to grow, with more than 36,000 students from around the country being inducted each year.
