The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland is a lively place for learning, exploration and growth. Through a wide range of programs, our artists and audiences experience personal, intellectual, and spiritual growth and artistic development.

We are:

A home for artists at all phases of their career.
The Center, located on the campus of the University of Maryland, is home to the students and faculty of the School of Music, Department of Theatre, Department of Dance, as well as the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. It is also home to many visiting artists through our "Maryland Presents" series. Emerging and seasoned artists, working together, spark each other's creative spirits.

A hothouse for unfamiliar, unpredictable and developing work.
The Center nourishes the growth and development of artists by commissioning new work and providing space, time and expertise for its development. We provide a safe place for new work to take root and thrive, while we offer audiences affordably priced tickets and opportunities to gain greater understanding of how the work they see is created.

A meeting place for diverse perspectives from diverse people.
The Center is committed to engaging diverse populations from our communities and from around the world. Students in a predominantly Spanish-speaking school in our community engage in residency programs with a guest artist. Audiences are transported to Africa, China, and other faraway ports of call just by taking a seat in our halls. Being part of vital campus community gives us an opportunity to share a wide variety of points-of-view.

A Center where the creative process is as important as the performance.
Adventurous audience members are interested in knowing the whys and hows about a performance: the influences, the intentions, the challenges and the thrills of collaboration and creation. We believe that great work happens here off stage as well as on stage. The Center provides "doorways" into the creative process through special events and activities for the general public.

An "experience-centered" place.
The Center is a comfortable place where audiences can make connections with performing artists and with each other. The intimate physical dimensions of our six performance spaces, classrooms and rehearsal rooms bring details up close, generating authentic interaction between artists and audiences. To observe the Center during the busy school week or at intermission during performances, is to see a vibrant community for the arts housed under one roof.