Student News

#IamUCI – Q&A with Class of 2022 graduate Anna Medina, M.F.A.

Q&A with Class of 2022 graduate Anna Medina, M.F.A. by Tom Vasich / UCI News In an essay for UCI’s Dance Major Journal, San Diego native Anna Medina wrote, “Growing up both Mexican and American, I lived on both sides of the border at different times in my life, sometimes sure that I...

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 ...

UCI M.F.A. Thesis Exhibitions 2022 head to the UAG

M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, Part I The Department of Art at the University of California, Irvine, is pleased to present the solo exhibitions of M.F.A. candidates Hiroshi Clark, Doris Rivera, and Gosia Wojas. This is the first round of 2022 M.F.A. thesis exhibitions. Please join us for the opening...

Mackenzie Ostrowski and the Intersection of KUCI, Independent Creators and Community Efforts

Support UCI Giving Day By Mia Hammett Fourth year film and media studies major in the School of Humanities, Mackenzie Ostrowski, is one of the few undergraduates on campus pioneering the return to small businesses. A news, music, and talk show host-in-one, Ostrowski’s made a name for herself...

A Year in Review: Eleanor Yu on Memory, the Pandemic and Creative Suffering

  Support UCI Giving Day By Mia Hammett Art and Film and Media Studies double major Eleanor Yu is a third-year student with all the cool, calm, and collectedness of a seasoned artist. She’s driven to create by an equally acute attention and appreciation for the subtleties of modern...

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...

Making Music Together

After a lonely year and a half, the UCI Symphony Orchestra is reveling in live performances once again. By Jill Kato After being away from the stage and studio, the students from the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA) are emerging from the pandemic and ...

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...

New Slate Brings Collaboration and Kindness

By Jezebel Ramirez-Robles New Slate 2021, the first dance concert of the season, brings a show of eight unique performances. Artistic director, Professor S. Ama Wray, is leading this year’s dance graduate students through the process as choreographers. Throughout the creation of this year’s New...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A Natural Artist

By Christine Byrd Ivy Guild’s art studio evokes a dystopian greenhouse. Ribbon-like strips of redwood trees and a 9-foot-long aloe vera trunk hang from the walls, as fungi thrive on various other biological materials. Guild, who completes her M.F.A. in June 2021, envisions her thesis show in...

21C Supports Faculty and Graduate Student Creative Research in the Arts

  Since its founding in 2017, the Institute for 21st Century Creativity (21C) has sought to cultivate experimental and arts-based research to innovate and challenge creativity for this century and beyond. With support from the UCI Office of Research, Dean Stephen Barker founded the...

Letter From a Senior

I never knew my favorite college experiences would be rooted in performance By Lauren Knight As someone who joined the Department of Drama during their third year at UCI, my biggest fear was feeling like an outsider amongst a tight-knit group of drama majors who all knew and bonded with each...

Renaissance Man

Graduate student Jesús López Vargas reflects a new generation behind the scenes in theatre By Christine Byrd Director, stage manager, producer, poet, photographer, videographer, designer, and an advocate for underrepresented voices: Jesús López Vargas wears many hats. As an M.F.A. candidate...