This mixed-methods interdisciplinary study explores the relationship between theatre skills and graduate teaching assistants' development as university instructors. The authors employ a critical lens to look at classroom interactions as acts of performance. Data, which they collected through surveys and interviews with graduate teaching assistants at a public university in the northeastern United States, reveal that there is a clear institutional need to provide meaningful support to novice teachers. The interdisciplinary research team concludes that the core tenets of theatre practice constitute important elements of the kind of support emergent teachers require.