While higher education has historically been tasked with the responsibility of fostering the moral development of society's future leaders, this duty is even more challenging today, as recent studies are reporting Millennial college students have higher levels of narcissism, coupled with declining levels of empathy and creativity compared to prior generations. Theater, which engages the cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and communication skills of the participants, should be explored as a creative, dynamic, and efficient means to bolster empathy and moral growth. Research studies in theater and empathy have yielded mixed results, often concentrating only on the actors, and studying either younger participants, theater education programs, or theater workshops. To extend this research, this mixed methods study aimed to examine how participation in a collegiate theater production impacted the cognitive and affective empathy of both the actors and the crew members. The quantitative strand of the study featured a pre-test, post-test distribution of the Perspective-Taking and Empathic Concern subsets of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index to 28 students involved with theater productions at three colleges in northeastern Pennsylvania during the spring of 2018. Qualitative data was gathered through weekly reflection questions throughout the rehearsal and performance timeframe, and via post-production interviews. Quantitative analyses revealed that while the participants' scores increased from pre-test to post-test in both affective and cognitive empathy, only the gains in cognitive empathy showed any statistical significance. Further analyses uncovered that crew members scored statistically higher in cognitive empathy than the cast members, while the affective empathy scores for the cast actually declined from pre-test to post-test. Potential causes for the decline in the actors' affective empathy scores were derived from comments in the qualitative data. The participants also self-reported numerous examples of both cognitive and affective empathy development throughout the qualitative data, with emerging themes of theater as a "transformative"; "inclusive"; and "educational" experience for encouraging empathy development. Implications for practice and suggested future research in this field are also discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]