News

Tania Katan to Give the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts Commencement Address

Trailblazing storyteller and champion of creativity to inspire the Class of 2023   Tania Katan, a powerful storyteller, bestselling author, and co-creator of the globally viral social impact campaign #ItWasNeverADress, has been chosen as the 2023 commencement speaker for the joint...

#IamUCI – Veronica Allen

Q&A with Class of 2023 graduate Veronica Allen, B.F.A. in dance performance By Tom Vasich | UCI Veronica Allen wasn’t born dancing; that didn’t start until she was 3 years old, and she hasn’t stopped yet. “It’s a passion,” she says. “It becomes a part of you.” Originally from Omaha,...

UROP Honors Claire Trevor School of the Arts 2023 Undergraduate Mentors

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) held the annual UCI Undergraduate Research Symposium, where they presented the Chancellor's Award Recipients for Undergraduate Mentorship. The ceremony occurred on May 19, 2023, at the Bren Center, where winners of the Chancellor's Award...

He’s Paid ‘Rent’ in Full

Broadway veteran Telly Leung comes full circle by guest-directing UCI Drama production of landmark 1996 rock musical whose themes particularly resonate in 2023 By Greg Hardesty When he was 16, native New Yorker Telly Leung was a self-described Rent head. He would line up on 41st Street...

Out On a Great Note

Legendary jazz pianist Kei Akagi to retire After more than two and a half decades of service to the University of California, Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI Chancellor’s Professor Kei Akagi will retire in the spring of 2023. His retirement marks the end of an era for the...

Getty Foundation awards exhibition grant to UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art + Technology

Funding will support its involvement in third regional Pacific Standard Time collaboration Irvine, Calif., May 9, 2023 — The Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine has received a $200,000 exhibition grant from the Getty Foundation to present “Future Tense: Art...

Arts Advocates: Goran Matijasevic

BRIDGE BUILDER Q&A with Goran Matijasevic As executive director of the UCI Chief Executive Roundtable, Goran Matijasevic, Ph.D., MBA, serves as an ambassador to the business community. He’s also one of the most avid supporters of the arts at UCI, attending nearly every performance,...

Art + Technology = Innovation

Alum Garnet Hertz’s new book chronicles 100 years of innovative DIY technology practices By Greg Hardesty As a child and teenager, Garnet Hertz lived in two worlds. He grew up in Saskatoon, a city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. In Saskatoon, snow is on the ground a third of...

Sara Guerrero on Directing THE SWEETHEART DEAL (video)

Tiffany Ana López, Ph.D., Dean and Claire Trevor Professor in the Department of Drama (pictured right), recently sat down with guest director Sara Guerrero (left) to talk about UCI Drama's upcoming production of The Sweetheart Deal, opening April 29 and running through May 7, 2023 in the Robert...

Coup De Comedy Festival Celebrates 10 Years of Free Fun!

UCI Hosts Comedy Festival and GII Exploration: Evolution of Improvisation May 10-13, 2023 The Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA) at UC Irvine will host the 10th annual Coup de Comedy Festival, a four-day event with panels, workshops, and performances available for free to the community....

Marissa Diaz Lights the Way

Alumna Marissa Diaz, M.F.A. ‘19, is the recipient of the 2022 Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Training from the University Resident Theatre Association (URTA). Since 2017, Diaz has been an assistant professor of Lighting Design and Technology at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)....

Lisa Allin on Socially-Responsible Jazz Dance

By Mia Hammett Dance teacher, retired performer, and aspiring choreographer Lisa Allin (M.F.A. Dance, ‘23) is an astute and well-intentioned practitioner of socially-responsible jazz dance. Her approach is incredibly pointed—being mindful of both the physical, embodied movements actively...

Advocating for disAbility in Dance

M.F.A. student Bradford Chin envisions a more inclusive future in dance By Christine Byrd Leotard. Tights. Classical music. To M.F.A. dance student Bradford Chin, these aren’t just universal symbols of ballet but potentially barriers for people who don’t fit a predefined mold. In the...

Unleashing Artists’ Creativity

By Christine Byrd Matt Bailey, MBA ’12, remembers how hard it was to be an artist on a student budget. He constantly needed film, photo paper, canvas and paints – and all of that was expensive, especially on top of tuition and living costs. Sometimes he just couldn’t afford the supplies. “It...

Kaysie José Comes Full Circle at CTSA

By Mia Hammett A once-UCI undergraduate, alumna Kaysie José (B.A. '11) is particularly qualified — and wholly committed — to bolstering the creative career pursuits of UCI’s arts students. After working in UCI’s Student Housing department, José joined the Claire Trevor School of the Arts (...

Building Roads with Music

Musician and professor Kojiro Umezaki builds connections between communities By Christine Byrd Kojiro Umezaki plays a traditional Japanese bamboo flute called shakuhachi, which has been around for centuries. But he also uses artificial intelligence to analyze and layer recordings of himself...

Alumni Wang Chong presents a Global Conversations event at UCI

UC Irvine will host prominent Sinophone artist and Department of Drama alum Wang Chong. Chong will present “Global Conversations | Sinophone Experimental Performance (Zoom, Online)” with his colleagues River Lin and Xiaoyi Liu. The work challenges conventional notions of political, national, ethnic...

Donovan Sherman, Ph.D. '11, gives a lecture on Shakespeare and Stoicism

UC Irvine welcomes back alumnus Donovan Sherman, who will be giving a talk on the connections between Stoicism and Shakespearean performance. Sherman, an associate professor of English and director of graduate studies at Seton Hall University, published The Philosopher’s Toothache: Embodied...