Past Drama Seasons

2019-2020, Women & Co.

A Centennial Celebration of Women’s Right to Vote

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19 th amendment granted American women the right to vote. Achieving this was a milestone in a long and arduous struggle, but it certainly wasn’t the end of the fight for equality. 

This season, the Department of Drama pays tribute to women artists and their voices. Aside from our opening production of Company, all five remaining productions are written by a woman. Four out of the six mainstage shows this season will be directed by women. The majority of drama graduate students and doctoral students are women. And the majority of all drama undergraduate students in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts are women.

2018-19, Against All Odds

History provides countless examples of individuals, communities, and nations facing desperate, unjust, and even seemingly impossible circumstances; yet somehow, time and again, they find the will and the means to overcome. These are the stories that make great theatre, and indeed, that keep us personally inspired and hopeful in difficult times. As citizens of this particular sociopolitical moment, when we are bombarded from every outlet to the brink of despondent apathy, we invite you to join us in living journeys of those who were faced with substantial adversity, but survived – and thrived – against all odds.

2017-18, The Business of Politics/The Politics of Business

Money talks. In an age when politicians are carefully-crafted public figures bought and paid for by lobbyists, Super PACs, corporate dollars and—potentially—a foreign government, a failed reality-TV star holds the office of the most powerful leader in the free world. Unsupported promises are more powerful than provable facts, and the interests of the ruling class are carried on the backs of the voiceless many… this is the era of the business of politics/the politics of business: where dirty deals are done daily.

2016-17, THEM!

UCI Drama's 2016-17 season, THEM!, explores our tendency - both as individuals and as societal groups - to separate and cast blame on "The Other." Through a series of plays and musicals that investigate religious persecution and genocide, the castigation of physical difference, interpersonal alienation, and our xenophobic reaction to other cultures culminating in war, we examine the ways in which we so often look to identify a scapegoat rather than find mutual understanding and acceptance. Present throughout the plays of the season we hear the voices of "them."