The Dance Performance Studio Theatre is both a teaching studio and public performance venue. The largest of the four studios in the new Dance building on North campus, it boasts 64’ by 68’ of space and is outfitted with state-of-the-art technology including sound and lighting capability, with built-in seating for 126 and the option of adding additional seating for an audience of 166.
The Keene Theater is the beloved performance venue for the U-M LSA Residential College’s faculty and student organizations. It is a multipurpose venue with seating for up to 150 (88 main floor and 62 balcony seats) and is fully equipped with an audio-video presentation system and stage lighting, microphones, PA and more. The Keene has a modest backstage area, a green room, and Keene Theater Stagehands to provide tech support.
The Duderstadt’s Digital Media Commons Video Studio is an experimental media lab and high quality documentation space that is available to the entire University of Michigan’s community. Well equipped and staffed, it enables original concepts and ideas to be turned into rich media that can be shared with the world. The Video Studio is also a collaborative sandbox, where faculty, students, visiting educators, scientists and artists come to collaborate and to produce or display high quality video and audio and to experiment with media technology. Performances and projects range from capturing green screen sequences, recording motion capture data, experimenting with projection mapping, or documenting an original performance using multiple cameras and microphones, and are typically experimental or academic and represent learning, teaching and research across the disciplines.
Named for Allen P. Britton, dean of SMTD 1971-1979, this intimate, comfortable hall serves as a performance and rehearsal space for solo recitals, and chamber music and other small ensembles. It doubles as a lecture hall and venue for master classes as well as lectures and performances by distinguished guests.
Designed primarily for opera and musical theatre, the McIntosh Theatre is also used for choral, orchestral, and other ensembles. The theatre was added to the Moore Building in 1985 and received a complete acoustical upgrade in 2015, providing students with a professional quality rehearsal and performance space.
As part of the 1985 expansion of the Moore Building, SMTD added this small recital and rehearsal hall and its C. B. Fisk organ, modeled after the instruments of the Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753), whose organs were a favorite of J.S. Bach. It is now known as the Marilyn Mason Organ, named for the renowned organ professor who led the Department of Organ for 66 years.
Rackham Auditorium has been the site of many numerous notable lectures, performances, and academic symposia in the 60-plus years since its opening. Horace H. Rackham was a Detroit lawyer whose will awarded the University of Michigan funds to build the Rackham Graduate School, which houses Rackham Auditorium, and to establish a $4 million endowment for graduate studies—a remarkable gift considering neither Horace nor his wife Mary attended the U-M. Designed in the classical renaissance style by architect William Kapp of the Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, the Rackham Building is considered to be one of the most historically significant buildings on campus. The building also contains splendid conference rooms and a 240-seat amphitheater. The interior of Rackham Auditorium which seats approximately 1044, is plush, with beautifully upholstered seating and a gold-leaf ceiling.
Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater is home to the Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series and many other U-M sponsored events and performances, including the Cinetopia International Film Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. The theater combines living history with a singular dedication to the finest film and live entertainment available today, offering two fully restored auditoriums: the historic theater and the screening room. The Michigan Theater also operates the nearby historic State Theater, located at 233 State Street, in downtown Ann Arbor.
This smaller auditorium that seats approximately 445 hosts many lectures and performing arts events for the U-M School of Music, Theater & Dance.
When Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller was approached by his alma mater about a theater bearing his name, his response was a simple postcard. “The theater is a lovely idea,” he wrote in 1997. “I’ve resisted similar proposals from others, but it seems right from Ann Arbor.” The venue is the only theater in the world to bear his name. It was configured as a highly flexible courtyard-format theater to showcase both professional and student productions, and to create a new cultural destination for the University and the Ann Arbor community. Designed for proscenium productions and able to accommodate an orchestra of up to 16, the space will more often be set up in a wide thrust stage configuration with seating on three sides and extraordinarily intimate dimensions between actor and audience. The theater seats approximately 517.