Department of Drama History

The Founding

Drama studies began at UCI with the campus itself in 1965, when Clayton Garrison persuaded the administration to make the arts a school rather than a department, a decision that shaped everything that followed. Garrison, Robert Cohen and Richard Triplett became the initial faculty, three people teaching acting, directing, dramatic literature and design out of a single theatre in Humanities Hall. There were seven drama majors, all undergraduates. Casting was open to the local community and every production sold out.

Early Growth

The following year, Drama adopted its "rule number one": only full-time UCI students or faculty could be cast, and Cohen created a Students’ Repertory Theatre that met daily from 1 to 11 p.m., presenting four to six plays a year. Distinguished visitors supplemented the small staff: playwright William Inge taught playwriting, Curt Conway of the Group Theatre and Brewster Mason of the Royal Shakespeare Company taught acting, and Broadway director Herbert Machiz staged Mother Courage with Lotte Lenya in the title role.

In 1970, the school moved into the new Fine Arts Village with three theatres, and M.F.A. programs were launched. Over the next two decades, those programs grew to preeminent status, expanding to three years, with permanent faculty appointed in each discipline and national auditions drawing students from across the country. A New York satellite program began. Jerzy Grotowski came to campus full time for three years to lead a research program in Objective Drama, bringing with him the UCI Barn and Yurt that remain part of the department’s landscape. Edward Albee was commissioned to write and direct a new play. Alumni began winning awards on Broadway, founding repertory companies and building careers in film and television.

A Global Department

By the 1990s, the department had grown to more than 25 full-time faculty and 400 students. A Ph.D. program was established, and the Music Theatre program tripled in size. Faculty were teaching, directing and designing across four continents, in Korea, Japan, China, Romania, Poland, Italy, Ghana and beyond, while new curriculum in Asian and Asian American theatre, African American theatre, and gay and lesbian theatre reflected the department’s deepening commitment to the diversity of global performance traditions.

A gift on behalf of actress Claire Trevor led to a complete renovation of the school’s principal stages, the renaming of the school itself and the appointment of endowed professorships, one of which brought Cornerstone Theater co-founder Bill Rauch to campus. In 2005, the university named Drama a "Program of Excellence," and an outside peer review declared it "outstanding, not only in California but among drama departments nationally."

The Department Today

Recent years have brought new faculty leadership across the design disciplines, directing, stage management, choreography and postcolonial drama, along with the department’s first Distinguished Professor, Mihai Maniutiu, artistic director of the National Romanian Theatre in Cluj. A B.F.A. in Music Theatre was created.

In 2012, under the artistic direction of Eli Simon, the New Swan Shakespeare Festival opened in a 135-seat portable Elizabethan theatre on the UCI campus, a professional festival where students and working artists perform Shakespeare under the stars each summer, and which has become one of the department’s most visible signatures.