The Founding

Drama studies began at UCI with the campus’s founding in 1965, when Clayton Garrison, appointed as “Chairman of the Arts Department” for the new campus, persuaded the administration to make the Arts a school rather than a department. Garrison thus became the founding dean of UCI’s School of Fine Arts, as it was thus named, and he, Robert Cohen and Richard Triplett became the initial Drama faculty, with Garrison teaching acting, Cohen directing and dramatic literature, and Triplett design. The campus’s sole theatre facility was what is now the Little Theatre in Humanities Hall.

Early Years

In its first season, Drama mounted three productions: The Night of the Iguana, directed by Cohen and Little Mary Sunshine and the American premiere of Oh, What a Lovely War! directed by Garrison. Scenic and costume designs for all the shows were by Triplett, and lighting was designed by the school’s tech director, John Elliott. There being only seven drama majors, all undergraduates, casting was open to members of the local community. There being little competition for dramatic - or even cinematic - entertainment in southern Orange County at that time, all productions sold out all performances, and Drama was well launched in the community.

The following year, Drama adopted its “rule number one,” whereby only full-time UCI students or faculty could be cast in productions. Cohen consequently created a Students' Repertory Theatre (soon renamed the Irvine Repertory Theatre) which met daily from 1:00 to 11:00, with intense classes and presenting four to six plays annually for the next four years. Distinguished adjunct faculty supplemented the tiny staff: William Inge taught playwriting, Curt Conway (a veteran of the Group Theater) and Brewster Mason (of the Royal Shakespeare Company) taught advanced acting, and Ian Bernard (of TV’s Laugh-In) taught film/television writing. Broadway director Herbert Machiz was engaged as a guest director, most notably staging Mother Courage with guest faculty artist Lotte Lenya in the title role.

Years of Transition

In 1970, the School moved across Bridge Road to the new Fine Arts Village, which included three theatres, and enrollments surged. Two-year MFA programs were launched, and new faculty arrived annually, including Cameron Harvey in lighting, Keith Fowler in directing, Douglas-Scott Goheen in scenic design, David McDonald in playwriting, Eli Simon in Acting, Dudley Knight in Voice, Stephen Barker in Theory, and Dennis Castellano in Music Theatre. Bill Needles, veteran actor of the Stratford (Canada) Shakespearean Festival became a frequent guest artist and teacher. In the 1980s, Drama brought its MFA programs to pre-eminent status by increasing degree requirements to three years, appointing program heads in each area, auditioning applicants around the country, appointing permanent faculty in voice, speech, movement and other subareas, and developing a fully integrated curricula for each program. A New York City satellite program began and quickly flourished; a focused research program in Objective Drama, with a half million dollars in outside funding, brought Polish luminary Jerzy Grotowski to the campus full-time for three years, and brought with it the UCI Barn and Yurt; a separate research program in Medieval Drama brought equal outside funding for a three-year series of 21 English mystery plays, and Edward Albee was commissioned to write and direct a new play. Faculty publications and journal editing earned broad international readerships, and UCI’s acting showcase, funded in perpetuity for graduate actors by a generous bequest, was established in New York and Hollywood. And Drama alumni had begun to found important repertory companies, write prize-winning plays, and win acting and design awards on Broadway, in regional theatres, and in films and television, all of which activity was recorded in the “Drama Alumni Newsletter” that began to be distributed nationally in 1978.

Recent Years

In the 1990s Stephen Barker and then Cameron Harvey assumed the department’s Chairship, as the department grew to a faculty of more than 25 full-time members and the student population to more than 400. The stunning 800-seat Irvine Barclay Theatre – on campus but owned by the city of Irvine - was added to the department's staging venues. Emmy award-winning designer Madeline Kozlowski became head of costume design, and Robert Weimann, a legendary Shakespearean scholar, helped design courses and proposals for a Ph.D. program developed in association with sister campus UC San Diego, which was implemented in 2000 under the direction of theorist/philosopher/playwright Bryan Reynolds. By the turn of the 21st, Drama had become a truly global enterprise, with faculty teaching, designing and touring productions in Korea, China, Poland, Japan, Romania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Ghana, Italy, Costa Rica, Spain, England, Scotland, Ukraine, and Hungary. Professor Daphne Lei established continuing studies in Asian and Asian-American theatre as did Frank Wilderson in African American theatre; Eli Simon took his international production of The Birds to Korea and Italy and Bryan Reynolds his Transversal Theatre Company to Romania, Poland and the Check Republic, and theatre scholar Janelle Reinelt created and led two separate global associations for the study of international performance and culture. Current and future technologies have also been keenly explored, with new appointments to Richard Brestoff in acting for the camera and Bill Tomlinson in interactive media. A ten million dollar gift on behalf of late actress Claire Trevor led to the remodeling of the School’s principal stages, the renaming of the school, and the appointment of two endowed Claire Trevor Professorships of Drama: one to Robert Cohen and the second to acclaimed Cornerstone Theater co-founder/director Bill Rauch. In 2005, with Cameron Harvey’s retirement, Cohen re-assumed the Department Chair for a limited term, and during that year the department, having been named by the campus as a “Program of Excellence,” was awarded two new faculty positions in the new area of Sound Design, permitting the department to engage Professor Michael Hooker to initiate an MFA program in that field and began the search for a second faculty colleague. Other gifts and awards have contributed to the redesign of the school’s central plaza by the distinguished architect, Maya Lin, and the planning for a redesign of the Studio Theatre and the design of an entirely new building for 2011. An outside academic review of the department in 2006 declared, quite simply, "This department is outstanding, not only in California but among drama departments nationally," with reviewers noting that the performance and production faculty were “outstanding throughout, [and] include some of the most prominent theatre educators and professionals in the country," and that the theory/critical faculty are “among the leaders in their field, nationally and internationally” and are producing scholarship that is “up-to-date and often pioneering."

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