CA’s state-of-the-art Performing Arts facilities inspire creativity, collaboration, and hands-on learning. The brand-new Centennial Arts Center provides dedicated spaces for both practice and performance, giving students the resources they need to explore and develop their artistic interests. Complementing the C.A.C. are additional arts facilities, including our professional-level dance studio, that offer even more opportunities for students to express themselves and grow as artists.
Opened in 2025, the Centennial Arts Center (C.A.C.) offers a world of possibility for CA students. This 37,000-square-foot facility is equipped with high-tech tools for music, digital media, theater, and interdisciplinary work. Sustainable and energy-efficient, the building is fully electric, powered by a rooftop solar array. Its innovative design supports both education and the environment.
This flexible and functional black-box theater offers seating for up to 200 people, with 154 being retractable seats to accommodate mainstage productions, drama classes, directors’ workshops, CA’s playwriting festival, technical theater work, dance performances, Music Café, film screenings, class meetings, and interdisciplinary coursework. Seating capacity is optimized to enhance audience engagement and support the work of student performers. Unfettered by a traditional stage and fixed seats, directors and designers are able to stretch their imaginations to create theatrical environments that best suit their artistic vision. Fully accessible catwalks above the stage area allow for safe, hands-on production work by student tech crews.
A light-filled room overlooking the Sudbury River, athletic fields, and Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel, this 100-seat hall provides ideal acoustics and open floor space to accommodate rehearsals and performances by CA’s musicians, including chamber music, choral ensembles, individual music lessons, recitals, and masterclasses. The space is also available throughout the day for practice, recording sessions, group meetings, cross-disciplinary courses, and other events.
An open space with a reconfigurable layout to serve multiple programmatic needs, the P3 Lab supports the integration of performing and visual arts, creates gallery space, and houses a robust A/V infrastructure for 21st century performance, production, and interdisciplinary exploration. This is a multifunctional classroom that can also be used as a gathering and meeting space.
Adjacent to the P3 Lab, the DPL provides a functional recording studio and post-production facility to support media production across all disciplines, and tools for classes across departments (e.g., languages, visual arts, film, photography, digital graphic design, computer science, podcasting, student portfolios, video production).
With sweeping, second-story views of the campus, this room is acoustically engineered to accommodate amplified music and serves as the rehearsal room for our jazz and pop ensembles, a classroom for group music instruction, as well as a space for students to gather and jam during off hours.
In this dedicated maker space, students participate in set construction and production support for the arts as well as other institutional projects. Students have the opportunity to take courses in technical design and production and can participate in tech crew during each of the three co-curricular seasons. Safety measures prioritize pedagogy and ensure students are learning to use specialized equipment in appropriate conditions. This shop also allows the performance spaces to remain open while sets are designed and built before load-in.
Practice rooms throughout the building, designed to accommodate various uses, create the conditions for students and teachers to study and work undisturbed. The rooms vary in size, with larger spaces meant to serve CA’s vibrant chamber music program, while smaller rooms allow for individual lessons and practice. Roughly 160 individual music lessons happen each week on an expansive variety of instruments, taught by a roster of professional musicians in the Boston area.
For the first time in 100 years, CA has suitable dressing rooms, makeup vanities, costume and prop storage, laundry, and bathrooms for performers—transforming the experience for student performers and crew.
Dedicated room for adults and students to work and have advising meetings enhances the Centennial Arts Center as a destination for collaboration and community building.
Located in the Student Health and Athletic Center (SHAC), CA’s light-filled dance studio is a treasured space. This 2,500-square-foot, professional-level dance studio was designed by renowned architect Graham Gund and features a sprung Marley floor, a wall of mirrors, and built-in ballet barres. It’s a calm and compelling place to turn one’s focus inward, negotiate relationships in space, and express oneself fully. The studio also converts to a black box performance space, bringing the work created there to an audience.
