Acting

The Acting Program Area at Howard University's Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts offers intensive, conservatory-level training within a liberal arts construct in one of the most strategically positioned programs in the nation. Located in Washington, DC — America's second largest market for American Theatre — students train in the newly renovated Ira Aldridge Theater and Al Freeman Jr. Environmental Theatre Space under nationally recognized faculty whose pedagogy is rooted in cultural competence and artistic rigor. 

In the Acting Program, the African Diasporic imagination is not a supplement to the curriculum. It is the foundation. Our training centers an African Diasporic lens alongside the classical Western canon, in direct conversation with contemporary research across theatre, performance studies, and cultural theory. 

Our approach is holistic, multi-hyphenate, interdisciplinary, and collaborative. Through it, students develop technical competence, critical consciousness, and creative sovereignty — becoming versatile, embodied narrative artists fluent across stage, screen, and emerging media. They graduate ready to step consciously into the arts and culture ecology, not as observers of the field, but as its pioneers, stewards, organizers, nurturers, authorities and cultural contributors.

The Acting Academic Plan requires students to complete the full 120- credit hour academic plan to meet graduation clearance.  The academic plan is designed to meet  Howard University's General Education Essential Learning Outcomes as well as Acting Program Area Learning Benchmarks.

Students in the Acting Program Area currently represent 21 states, plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, coming from various socioeconomic backgrounds, and with varying degrees of exposure to acting training.  All students, however, must gain admission to the university and are therefore scholars first — Howard's competitive admissions standards ensure that every actor in this program enters with demonstrated academic strength, in addition to their artistic promise. The vision of the College of Fine Arts is to nurture creatives, scholars and artist-activists.  Our faculty and student populations work to embody that vision. 

Admission to the Acting Program Area is a deliberate and discerning process. We do not simply select students — we curate an ensemble. After gaining admission to the University, each cohort is assembled with intentionality, balancing artistic range, personal perspective and collective potential, because the people you train alongside are not merely your classmates. They are your first professional community. You will challenge one another, discover one another, and ultimately become colleagues who carry the imprint of this training — and of each other — throughout your careers. The curriculum is designed to be navigated together, building the trust, creative vocabulary, and collaborative intelligence that professional ensemble work demands. 

Within the Acting Program, community extends far beyond the rehearsal room. In addition to the academic plan, students apply their learning in the mainstage production season, and engage a rich supplemental curriculum that includes visiting artist residencies, industry masterclasses, and the Acting Program Area's professional development lecture series, alongside interdisciplinary opportunities that connect theatre to music, dance, visual art, film, and the humanities. Washington, DC amplifies every dimension of this experience, placing students in proximity to world-class institutions, policy makers, cultural organizations, and a thriving professional arts community that regards Howard as a vital creative partner. 

To train here is to belong to something. To be chosen for this ensemble is to accept an invitation to become not only a working artist, but a leader in the ongoing evolution of American and African Diasporic performance. 

Admission to this area of concentration is by audition only.  Candidates cannot be admitted to the Acting Program Area without completing a successful live in-person or virtual callback audition. 

Visit our Audition page for information and instructions about the virtual submission and audition processes. 

Howard University offers need-based financial aid, and qualified applicants may request an application fee waiver through the Office of Admissions.  Please reach out to the College of Fine Arts Center for Student Success for guidance. 

We are looking for more than the willingness to express emotion. We are looking for artists who are ready — ready to be challenged, transformed, and accountable to something larger than themselves. The ideal candidate for the Acting Program Area at Howard University arrives with hunger, humility, integrity, confidence in their ability to learn, and a genuine investment in the power of storytelling to change the world. They understand that training at the Mecca carries both privilege and responsibility. 

Our ideal student need not have extensive acting training.  Most importantly, an ideal student for the Acting Program embodies: 

• Artistic Fearlessness — a willingness to take creative risks, inhabit uncomfortable truths, and pursue the full range of human experience on stage and screen 
• Cultural Competence — an awareness of and respect for the diversity of human experience, with particular grounding in African Diasporic history, culture, and artistic tradition 
• Intellectual Curiosity — a love of rigorous inquiry across theatre history, dramatic literature, performance theory, and the interdisciplinary conversations that shape contemporary practice 
• Technical Discipline — the commitment to develop voice, body, and imagination as precision instruments through daily, sustained practice 
• Collaborative Spirit — the understanding that theatre is a collective art form, and that generosity toward fellow artists is as essential as individual excellence 
• Integrity — a dedication to honest work, ethical conduct, and accountability in every rehearsal room, classroom, and professional context 
• Resilience — the emotional fortitude to receive feedback, navigate failure, and return to the work with renewed purpose 
• Empathy — the capacity to inhabit lives unlike your own with specificity, compassion, humanity and no judgement 
• Agility — the ability to move fluidly across styles, forms, genres, and media — from classical text to contemporary devised physical theatre work; from stage to screen performance 
• Vision — a clear and evolving sense of the artist you are becoming and the impact you intend to have 
• Professional Readiness — an orientation toward the industry that is entrepreneurial, self-aware, and forward-thinking, whether the path leads directly to professional work or to advanced graduate study 
• Civic Imagination — the belief that art is not separate from the world but inseparable from it, and that the stories we tell have the power to both reflect and shape the future we inhabit 

Howard's Acting Program Area has produced an extraordinary lineage of multi-hyphenate artists — performers, directors, producers, activists, educators, and culture bearers who have not simply entered the American arts landscape, but shaped it. These are artists who use the craft of acting as a vehicle for leadership, innovation, and cultural change. 

The list below represents only a portion of a legacy too vast to fully contain. Those marked with an asterisk trained in the Department of Drama, the predecessor to the distinct Acting Program Area within today's Department of Theatre Arts (established in 1992) — a lineage we claim with pride. 

Ossie Davis* (entered the Department of Drama to study playwriting, but found his calling in acting) — Kennedy Center Honoree (2004) for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts 

Phylicia Rashad* — The first Black woman to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play  

Debbie Allen* — Recipient of the 2026 Academy Honorary Award  

Roxie Roker* — Originated the role of Helen Willis on The Jeffersons, one of television's first interracial couples 

Lynn Whitfield* — Primetime Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for The Josephine Baker Story  

Karen Malina White* — Starred opposite Morgan Freeman in the landmark film Lean on Me 

Carl Anthony Payne II* — Originated the role of Cole Brown on the iconic sitcom Martin 

Wendy Raquel Robinson* — Starred in the Steve Harvey Show and as Tasha Mack on The Game across multiple seasons and networks  

Craig Wallace* — A four-time Helen Hayes Award nominee and one of the most prolific working actors in Washington, DC theatre, with credits at nearly every major DMV stage including Arena Stage, Folger Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Ford's Theatre, where he has played Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol for multiple seasons 

Anthony Anderson — Received seven consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Black-ish  

Taraji P. Henson — Academy Award-nominated for her performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; founder of the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation 

Tracie Thoms — Starred in the original Broadway and film cast of Rent 

Susan Kelechi Watson — Starred as Beth Pearson in the critically acclaimed NBC drama This Is Us  

Greg Alvarez Reid — Starred alongside Mahershala Ali, Oprah Winfrey, and Phylicia Rashad in HBO's Between the World and Me, the celebrated adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates' bestselling book 

Kamilah Forbes — Led the Apollo Theater as Executive Producer for a decade, overseeing an $85 million capital campaign that built the historic Victoria Theater 

Chadwick A. Boseman (honorable mention, as he was a Directing major, not an Acting major — which speaks to the Department of Theatre Arts' commitment to developing diverse, versatile, and truly multi-hyphenate creatives) — Posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and winner of the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award, for his performance as Levee Green in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; globally celebrated as T'Challa in Marvel's Black Panther 

Maya Camille Broussard — a celebrated culinary entrepreneur, founding the acclaimed Chicago bakery Justice of the Pies and appearing on Netflix's Bake Squad — a vivid example of the program's "multi-hyphenate" promise in action 

Nikkole Salter — OBIE Award winner and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright and actress for In the Continuum with Danai Gurira 

Ryan Jamaal Swain — Starred as Damon Richards in FX's culturally groundbreaking series Pose 

Lauren E. Banks — Starred as Jennie Reeves in Paramount+'s Lawmen: Bass Reeves 

The Acting Program Area faculty are not observers of the industry. They are working inside it — on stages, in studios, in communities, and in scholarship — while training the next generation at Howard. Nine artist-educators bring to the classroom not only technical mastery and pedagogical rigor, but the living, current knowledge of what professional practice demands. 

Ty'Ree Hope Davis ('25) — Actor, Poet, Artistic Activist 

Howard's Acting Program Area continues to feed the nation's most prestigious graduate training programs. We are proud to celebrate: 

Prince-Bajon Bihai — Accepted to the Yale School of Drama 

James McClam — Accepted to The Juilliard School 

Brittany Davis — Accepted to Yale School of Drama 

Parker Essex Harder - Accepted into directing program at Yale School of Drama

These admissions reflect not only the talent and commitment of our students, but the rigor of the training they receive here at Howard — training that prepares artists to compete and excel at the highest levels of the profession. 

What does it mean to train on an international stage? Ask our alumnae. 

Tabitha Straker ('26), Amauriah Davis ('26), Khalyla Semexant ('26), and current student Alexandria Wood (‘27) spent a transformative semester training at the British American Drama Academy (BADA) London Program with Sarah Lawrence College — one of the world's most prestigious intensive conservatory programs. Their experience deepened their classical training, expanded their global artistic perspective, and positioned them as artists fluent in both American and British theatrical traditions. Hear directly from them about what it meant to carry Howard's legacy to London — and what they brought back. 

Talk to Quinn Leak (‘27)  and Tyrie Wallace (‘27) returning from the BADA Midsummer summer program! 

Talk with Kevoy Sommerville (‘27) starring in Capital Classics Theatre Company Summer Shakespeare Festival’s productions of Measure for Measure and Midsummer Night’s Dream 

Prof. Nikkole Salter, a member of the Creative Core of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown is invited to direct her seminal play IN THE CONTINUUM at the Mitambo Theatre Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe where one acting student will have the opportunity to travel and perform with a Zimbabwean theatre student, September 2026. 

Check out the work of Acting Students bringing dramatic literature to life in the International Black Writers Festival! 

Business Show: On the Business of Acting 
A Professional Development Lecture Series — Acting Program Area, AY 2026–27 

Howard University's Acting Program Area is proud to launch Business Show, a year-long professional development series designed to support career training. Open to the full Department of Theatre Arts, the series brings working professionals directly to our students through panels, workshops, and interactive sessions. 

Upcoming sessions include: 

The Arts and Culture Economy - An information session that defines the ecology and economy of the arts and culture industries, that is; the institutional landscape of business interactions and possibilities.  Includes acting business history through our contemporary marketplace economy. Focuses on how actors interact with that economy and what it means to be in Business as an actor.  Introduces the Business Plan template and the idea that the business of acting has little to do with the technical aspects of acting.  All the things you have to be able to do and manage so that you can act. 

In the Contract — Contract types, AI consent clauses, collective bargaining and knowing your rights. Featuring AEA DC Liaison, entertainment attorneys from Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts. 

Marketing, Branding & the Digital Actor — Headshots, reels, self-tape, social media strategies, and building your brand. Featuring DC Office of Cable Television, Film, Music & Entertainment (OCTFME) and TIVA-DC, Breakdown Services Liaison. 

Managing Your Finances as a Working Artist — Taxes, deductions, retirement, and building financial security on an irregular income. Featuring entertainment CPAs, Business Managers and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. (also discussing the proper relationship between an actor and their money consultants)  

Booking the Gig — How the casting ecosystem works, from submission to callback. Featuring DMV casting directors, and NYC agents and managers including a live mock audition session.  (also discussing the proper relationship between an actor and their agents, etc.)  

Working the Job - An information session about AEA membership and protections, professional etiquette, HR policies, workplace standards - knowing your rights and responsibilities to the workplace. Featuring the AEA DC Liaison, Company Management and an HR person. 

The Actor Entrepreneur — Considering the actor as a generative artist, creating content and their own opportunities in the storytelling marketplace. 

The Leading Actor: Race, Representation & Power — A workshop and conversation about leadership, empowerment and navigating the industry as an actor. Featuring Howard University alumni working professionally in theatre, film, and television. 

Acting in the World of AI and New Media — Voice cloning, digital doubles, mo-cap, and protecting your likeness. Featuring OCTFME, Howard School of Communications faculty, and the SAG-AFTRA AI Task Force. 

Acting Well  — The nexus of acting, health and well-being; tools and resources for navigating physical/social/emotional risk factors associated with the life of a professional actor.  Side hustles and bridge jobs 

Business Plan – A workshop session walking actors through creating their own business plan and strategy for entering the field. 

Sessions meet throughout the academic year. All DoTA students welcome.