Make a Gift
Faculty 
Play explores UCI’s PrisonPandemic project

The disembodied voices of incarcerated people – scared, pleading, angry, upset – will haunt a UCI play about the coronavirus in California’s crowded penitentiaries. Set to run April 29 through May 1 in the campus’s Little Theatre, “COVID in Custody” chronicles the real-life efforts of three UCI...
Student 
Music Theatre Talent Kayla Quiroz on Identity and the Future

Support UCI Giving Day By Mia Hammett Triptych talent and third-year music theatre B.F.A. Kayla Quiroz won’t be slowing down anytime soon.  The actor-singer-dancer’s resume boasts a string of music theatre experience as early as her formative years. From an eight-year-old’s Acorns to Oaks church...
Faculty, Connect 
Hooked from the Start

Professor Michael Hooker receives top honor for career achievement in sound design By Jill Kato Professor Michael Hooker has received the 2022 Distinguished Achievement Award in Sound Design from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), the premiere organization in his field....
 
8 Top Costume Design Programs

The Department of Drama Costume Design Program recently made the list for the top 8 design programs for Backstage Magazine's annual list. The program combines practical professional training with exploring and identifying each student's artistic voice.
Faculty 
Daphne Lei Appointed Director of UCI Illuminations, the Arts and Culture Initiative

Professor of Drama Daphne Lei has been appointed Director of UCI Illuminations, the Arts and Culture Initiative, effective Feb. 1, 2022. Provost Hal Stern made the announcement on behalf of Chancellor Howard Gillman on Jan. 28, 2022. Lei has served as interim director since Jan. 1, 2022. Lei has...
Alumni, Faculty, Student, Connect 
Curtains Up

UCI alumni and faculty help reopen live theater on Broadway and national tours By Christine Byrd One of Kaden Kearney’s, M.F.A. ’19, last performances before the pandemic was at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Now, Kearney is taking curtain calls at the Kennedy Center and the Ahmanson...
Faculty 
Bringing to Life Madame Modjeska’s Fairytale

By Mia Hammett   Living, breathing on-screen animation. A kaleidoscopic patchwork of actors awhirl. Engaging sonic and visual experimentalism. This is Madame Modjeska’s Fairytale, the latest film production from Annie Loui, Claire Trevor School of the Arts professor of acting and artistic...
Student 
Getting In On The Act

After performing a live reading of an in-progress play at UCI’s Winifred Smith Hall, the actors and others working with Orange County’s South Coast Repertory theater company offered the audience of about 80 UCI drama students the kind of career advice they had probably gotten before from their...
Alumni, Connect 
Jeffrey Lo Strives to Connect Theater with Diverse Communities

By Richard Chang Since graduating from UC Irvine in 2010, Jeffrey Lo has kept busy. He has stuffed a résumé full of accomplishments while pursuing theater in Silicon Valley — not exactly the first place you might think of when it comes to live theater. But he’s a San Jose native, so blazing...
Faculty 
UCI Drama Faculty and Students Produce Multimedia Dance Theater About Madame Marie Curie

Chancellor's and Claire Trevor Professor Bryan Reynolds in the Department of Drama leads a thrilling collaboration of theater focused on the life and work of Madame Marie Skłodowska Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. The partnership is between Transversal Theater Company and Laurie...
Student 
Take it From the Class of 2022: You Got This

By Lauren Knight, B.A. ’21  There are four classes of students heading back to Claire Trevor School of the Arts this fall, but only one class has spent a full year on campus. It’s crazy to think that half of our CTSA community has never stepped foot on campus before Welcome Week! We know that it’s...
Alumni 
Kaden Kearney (M.F.A., '18) Will Star As Emma In THE PROM National Tour

The tour is set to open November 2nd in Cleveland. Casting has been announced for the upcoming National Tour of THE PROM. Kaden Kearney (they/them) will star as Emma, Kalyn West as Alyssa Greene, Courtney Balan as Dee Dee Allen, Patrick Wetzel as Barry Glickman, Emily Borromeo as Angie Dickinson,...
Student, Connect 
Chloe King and Summer Session Uplift Queer Voices

Medici Scholars Chloe King and Summer Session Uplift Queer Voices in Searching for Shelter By Lauren Knight When UCI Drama M.F.A. directing candidates Chloe King and Summer Session started collaborating last summer, they had no idea that their co-directed project on racism in childhood would...
Student, Connect 
Emerging Brighter

UCI student artists discovered and honed new skills in 2021 By Christine Byrd When UCI moved operations online a year and a half ago, everyone gained new skills: creating an at-home studio, mastering Zoom meetings and troubleshooting technology. But as artists struggled to keep their creative...
Alumni, Connect 
Donnetta Lavinia Grays Views Theater as a Place ‘Where Community Can Flourish’

By Richard Chang UC Irvine M.F.A. graduate Donnetta Lavinia Grays (acting, ’02) was already an accomplished actor and playwright when she received news this year that would change her life. In February, she was informed that she had won a prestigious Whiting Award, a $50,000 annual grant that...
Faculty, Student 
Coup de Comedy Festival brings a global community together

  By Lauren Knight When founding UCI’s student improv team, Improv Revolution (iRev), with his fellow students in 2011, Joel Veenstra had no idea that UCI’s student improv group would grow into what it is today. Now, Veenstra serves as the group’s faculty mentor, and produced an event with iRev...
Student 
UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts Names Ten New Medici Scholars

UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA) is pleased to announce the 2021 Medici Circle Scholars. Ten awards were given to both undergraduate and graduate students offering an opportunity to take their education beyond the classroom and collaborate with academics and artists in our community and...
Faculty, Connect 
Raising Community Voices

Director and playwright Juliette Carrillo helps bring hidden stories to the stage By Christine Byrd When Juliette Carrillo's play Plumas Negras was performed in 2013 in the East Salinas, Calif., community where it was set, some audience members were brought to tears. Not only had Carrillo written...