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Since 1967, Stage Center Theatre (SCT) has produced more than 250 plays on campus in its over 50 years of programming.

Stage Center Theatre is Northeastern Illinois University's resident producing theatre, and provides vital entertainment, enrichment, and social forum to the University and the Chicago area community. Each season, Stage Center Theatre produces a new play festival and contest, full Main Stage productions for all audiences, and Children’s Theatre Workshop productions for the Chicago Public Schools audiences ranging from elementary to high school students. Our participants range from Northeastern students, faculty and staff in roles such as actors, stage managers, directors, designers, playwrights and technical production staff.

Mission

Supporting the mission of Northeastern Illinois University and the pedagogical needs of the Communication, Media and Theatre Department, Stage Center Theatre (SCT) provides a professional application of theatre craft by producing challenging, dynamic and intersectional stories that drive the work of the United States and global theatrical communities. SCT storytelling centers around crucial societal questions, reflects our campus identity, and provides our audience with electric, living experiences that propel conversation, move the soul and enliven the heart. In doing so, SCT endeavors to be an expressive home for campus and community, a safe, diverse, and inclusive artistic environment, and a community beacon that underscores the pursuit of social justice in Chicago theatre and beyond.

Vision

• To become the most inclusive and innovative theatrical educational facility in the city.
• To propel and support the professional theatrical training and artistic awareness of all artists in the Northeastern community.
• To be a space that values process over product and guides Northeastern students to engage industry best practices.
• To become an artistic home that ensures the active representation of, listening to, and advocating for the voices of the underrepresented, marginalized, and invisible.
• To mine the value of productive discomfort in storytelling.
• To build an artistic incubator and platform that emboldens play, ownership, and new traditions.
• To spark meaningful social forum, ideas, intersection, community partnership, collaboration, and action.

Values

• Excellence
• Commitment
• Inclusivity
• Equity
• Intersectionality
• Empathy
• Community
• Curiosity
• Growth