TPP2190C – Theatre Rehearsal and Performance is a production practicum: students earn credit by working on a departmental theatre production, in performance or in a production role. Lake-Sumter State College titles a comparable offering Summer Theatre/Performance. The course is repeatable for credit at most institutions, which is how theatre majors accumulate production experience across a program.
It is unlike a classroom course in almost every respect. There is no weekly meeting pattern in the usual sense — there is a rehearsal calendar, a technical week, and a run of performances, all on the production's schedule rather than the student's. Assessment rests on participation, reliability, and growth across the process rather than on examinations.
Content and activity vary by assignment but generally include audition and casting or crew assignment; the rehearsal process — table work, blocking, working rehearsals, run-throughs, and notes; script and role preparation; ensemble collaboration; production roles — stage management, run crew, deck, wardrobe, lighting and sound operation, and shop work; technical rehearsals and the integration of design elements; performance — sustaining and adapting a role or a running task across a run; theatre etiquette and safety — call times, the callboard, backstage conduct, and working safely with equipment and at height; strike and load-out; and reflection on the process.
Offered at approximately 11 Florida institutions with theatre programs.
Florida institutions differ substantially: FGCU carries a comparable practicum at 1 credit, Lake-Sumter at 3, and 2 credits is common. Most institutions allow the course to be repeated for credit, often up to a stated maximum, because production experience accumulates across a program. Two consequences: verify the credit value and repeat limit locally, and confirm how many repetitions a receiving institution will accept in transfer, since practicum credit transfers less predictably than academic coursework.
This is the practical warning. A production consumes evenings for four to six weeks of rehearsal, then technical week — commonly the heaviest, with long nights — then a run of performances. A 1- or 2-credit practicum can easily occupy fifteen to twenty-five hours a week during peak periods. Students must plan the term around the production calendar, and should be candid with employers and with themselves about availability before accepting a role. Overcommitting is the most common way students damage both their grades and their standing in a department.
Theatre runs on people showing up prepared, on time, every time, because a rehearsal cannot proceed without its cast and a performance cannot be paused. Departments grade accordingly, and reputations form fast in a small program. The students who get cast repeatedly and recommended afterward are reliable before they are talented — and this transfers directly to professional practice, where the industry is small and references travel.
Students often assume the practicum means acting. Crew assignments — stage management, deck, wardrobe, board operation — teach how a production actually functions, and the employment market for technical theatre is considerably larger and steadier than for performance. In Florida specifically, theme parks, cruise lines, and the convention and corporate events industry hire technicians continuously. A student who works several technical assignments leaves with a genuinely marketable skill set.
Theatre involves working at height, with rigging and counterweight systems, with electricity, with power tools, and in the dark. Injuries happen, including serious ones. Departments enforce safety rules — closed-toe shoes, no working alone at height, following the fly system procedures, respecting the ghost light and running lights — and students should treat instruction as instruction rather than as caution.
Production credits, programs, photographs, prompt books, and a paper trail of roles held are what a theatre resume consists of. Students who document each production as they go — role, show, director, dates, and any images the department permits — leave a program with a usable record. Students who reconstruct it afterward always leave things out.
Production practicum content appears under several numbers — TPP2190 and TPP2190C, along with TPA-prefixed technical practicum numbers for production and stagecraft work at some institutions. It is distinct from TPP1110 (Acting I) and TPP2300C (Directing I), which are studio classroom courses and do not substitute for the practicum in either direction. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026