Welcome to TFDP!

The Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production is a practice-based program taught by nationally and internationally acclaimed professional practitioner-scholars.

Together, we:

  • Spotlight storytelling through different media - theatre, film, and digital production - to help our students understand the mechanics of narrative drama.
  • Empower storytellers to develop their unique voices as reflective of their social, cultural, and historical legacies.
  • Emphasize the analytical and practical skills our students will need to pursue their chosen career paths as actors, directors, writers, performance scholars, dramaturges, and filmmakers.
  • Educate researcher-practitioners who will think critically about their community, society, and world, and respond with insight and creativity to their place within it.

Upcoming Events

Black Lives Matter

The department of Theatre, Film & Digital Production at the University of California, Riverside joins the chorus of voices calling for justice for the numerous Black lives taken at the hands of law enforcement as represented by the recent killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

When those sworn to “Protect and Serve” us kill Black people, the echoes of protests from around the world resonate in a special way in Riverside. UCR sits but a few miles away from the corner of Central and Brockton avenues where 19-year-old Tyisha Miller was killed by Riverside police officers in 1998, an event that generated demonstrations, calls for change, a trial, and the usual acquittal of the officers who put 12 bullets into her unconscious body. It also led to the play Dreamscape, written by Rickerby Hinds which explored the antagonistic relationship between the police and the Black community, as well as its film adaptation My Name Is Myeisha; The Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability was also established. But the work continues.

Our campus is the most diverse of the 10 University of California sister campuses and has the greatest number of Black students. Unfortunately, in spite of this reality, or perhaps because of it, our Black students find themselves dealing with issues from racial profiling by our own officers to sidelining Black voices in our syllabi, and so much more. From campus police to the classroom, from the street to stage and screen, we can do better. We will do better. But the struggle continues.

We say unequivocally: Black Students Matter. Black Stories Matter. Black Lives Matter.

“Until justice rolls down like waters…” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Recognition of Native Lands

We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the original and traditional territory of Tongva people [Tongva and Cahuilla people] and within Tongva, Cahuilla, Luiseño, and Serrano original lands and contemporary territories.

In the spirit of Rupert and Jeanette Costo’s founding relationship to our campus, we would like to respectfully acknowledge and recognize our responsibility to the original and current caretakers of this land, water, and air: the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples and all of their ancestors and descendants, past, present, and future. Today this meeting place is home to many Indigenous peoples from all over the world, including UCR faculty, students, and staff, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these homelands.