Each season, the New Swan theater company at UCI performs two Shakespeare plays rotating on a nightly basis throughout July and August. This season features “Twelfth Night”and “Measure For Measure.”
The theater is a portable 130 seat, mini-Elizabethan theater located in Gateway Commons at UCI for the duration of the festival each summer. Depending on the stage view, ticket price varies with groundlings seats, simply seat cushions on the floor, being the cheapest.
“Measure for Measure” is adapted and directed by Beth Lopes and is set in modern day Vienna, Austria. The play features a young nun asked to compromise her purity to a man in legal power in order to save her brother’s life.
“It felt important that our audiences see this world as one not relegated to the distant past. In fact, if we’re not careful, it could be our future. This play asks a lot of challenging questions,” Lopes said in the director’s notes as the reason for the modern setting.
Each year, the theater is constructed in the Gateway Commons for the festival. Amelie de Jesus, a second-year drama student at UCI who works as the lightning board operator for “Twelfth Night” and sound board operator for “Measure for Measure,” estimated that loading lights into the portable theater required three or four days for the 2024 season.
“What it looked like for us is having to grab every single one of those instruments from the production shop down in the Claire Trevor School for the Arts,” de Jesus told New University.
For the 2024 season, “Twelfth Night” was adapted and directed by Eli Simon, the founder of New Swan. The Shakespeare play “Twelfth Night,” is set at sea, centered around human love and attraction intertwined with mistaken identities and circumstances.
The construction of the New Swan theater was funded with money awarded to the Drama Department at UCI in 2011 for having been recognized by UCI as a “Department of Excellence.”
The first outdoor New Swan festival season took place in 2012 and sold out. The festival has sold out every live season since. Due to the COVID pandemic there were no live performances in person during 2020 and 2021, the theater instead made films and performed on zoom.
The UCI affiliated festival consists of staff, current students, alumni of UCI and guest actors. The festival is a mixture of students, working actors and other professionals.
Megan January is a fourth-year music theater major at UCI participating in the New Swan festival for the first time. As an apprentice, she receives understudy positions and workshop access.
“The level of commitment and excellence that [the working actors] show is insane. I’ve learned so much just watching them work. It’s like its own summer school,” January told New University.
The two plays at New Swan Shakespeare Festival rotate with each daily performance. Many actors and crew members work in multiple capacities in roles across both shows. Each show requires a different set that must be assembled and dismantled with each performance.
“Measure for Measure” Assistant Stage Manager and third-year, Annie Mulvihill, spoke to the differences between New Swan and university productions she had previously been a part of.
“I’ve also never done this long of a run. Usually university shows are like a weekend or two and this one’s about a month and a half,” Mulvihill told New University.
The 2024 season will continue with multiple showings of both plays every week through August 31. UCI students have the opportunity to attend for free by participating in student rush, where students can line up at the venue beginning at 7:15 p.m. for limited first come, first serve tickets at each show.
Alyse Billiard is a News Intern for the summer 2024 quarter. She can be reached at abilliar@uci.edu.
Edited by Kaelyn Kwon, Victoria Le, Annabelle Aguirre and Jacob Ramos.
