New Swan Theater

Last updated

The New Swan Theater is an outdoor, portable theater that is assembled and disassembled each summer as part of New Swan Shakespeare Festival, [1] the annual Shakespeare festival at the University of California, Irvine. It is a reduced-size replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Contents

Construction

The New Swan Theater was designed by Luke Cantarella, Drama Professor at UCI, and engineered and assembled by Keith Bangs of UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts. [2] It was built out of recycled materials. [3] This circular theater has 15 modular units, each weighing one ton. [4] The wood and steel structure is stored in winter to protect it from the weather, and then moved to the university's Gateway Commons in early June for the festival season. [5]

The New Swan Theater is styled as a mini-Elizabethan theater. [3] It is roof-less, with 132 seats on three levels set in the round. [6] There are five sets of seats: The Kings row - on the stage itself, the Groundlings - also on the stage, The Queens - first row mezzanine, the Lords - second row mezzanine, and The Heavens - up on the balcony. Unlike most theaters, the balcony is directly atop the mezzanine. Every seat is close to the stage.[ citation needed ]

Performances

The theater was given a test run in February 2012 on the stage of the Claire Trevor Theatre at UCI for performances of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, directed by Eli Simon and featuring Richard Brestoff as Shylock. The New Swan's first outdoor season was held in August 2012 with performances of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Beth Lopes, and The Merchant of Venice, directed by Eli Simon. [7] In 2013 the festival featured King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream , with The Fantasticks playing in September. [8] In 2013 the New Swan Shakespeare Festival was presented with an Orange County Arts Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Built Environment. [9]

The 2014 season featured Twelfth Night [10] and Romeo and Juliet . [5] In 2015 it showed Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing . [11] The 2016 season featured Hamlet and As You Like It , [12] [13] and the 2017 season featured The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew . [14] [15] [16] The seventh season in 2018 included performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. [17] [18] The 2019 season featured The Merchant of Venice and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The next two live seasons were cancelled due to COVID. At this point in time, The New Swan Shakespeare Center was established. The Center and Festival presented filmed productions during the COVID years: A Midsummer Night's Zoom, Wherein I See Myself, and All the World's a Stage. In 2022, the Festival returned with The Comedy of Errorrrs and Pericles. The 2023 season featured three plays (for the first time) in rotating rep: As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) (revised) (redone). In 2024, the Festival is staging perennial favourite Twelfth Night alongside Measure for Measure .

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Taymor</span> American film and theatre director and writer (born 1952)

Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bard on the Beach</span> Annual Shakespeare festival in Vancouver

Bard on the Beach is Western Canada's largest professional Shakespeare festival. The theatre festival runs annually from early June through September in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The festival is produced by Bard on the Beach Theatre Society whose mandate is to provide Vancouver residents and tourists with affordable, accessible Shakespearean productions of the finest quality. In addition to the annual summer festival, the Society runs a number of year-round theatre education and training initiatives for both the artistic community and the general community at large. Bard on the Beach celebrated its 30th anniversary season in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brownsea Open Air Theatre</span> Theatre in Dorset, England

Brownsea Open Air Theatre is an open-air Shakespearean theatre company based in Poole, Dorset that have performed large theatrical productions since 1964. Annually, performing a play from the extensive works of William Shakespeare for three weeks in July and August, the production is set on the National Trust's Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour with boats transporting patrons to the island from Poole Quay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespeare Santa Cruz</span>

Shakespeare Santa Cruz was an annual professional theatre festival in Santa Cruz, California, which ran from 1981 to 2013. After losing the financial support of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the company was relaunched through crowdfunding as Santa Cruz Shakespeare.

Shakespeare by the Sea was a summer outdoor event held at Balmoral Beach in Sydney's northern suburbs, using a band rotunda as a backdrop, that ran in summer for twenty-five seasons, from 1987 to 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Shakespeare Festival</span> Theatre festival in Tallahassee, Florida

The Southern Shakespeare Festival is an annual festival in Tallahassee, Florida organized by the Southern Shakespeare Company. The festival's first incarnation existed from 1995 to 2000. In 2012, a group of scholars saw an opportunity to revive the free outdoor festival at the award-winning Cascades Park.

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) is a theatre company based in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 2002, by Ian Gallanar and Heidi Busch-Gallanar, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has grown into one of the twenty largest Shakespeare theaters in the United States under the leadership of Founding Artistic Director Ian Gallanar and Managing Director Lesley Malin. The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has performance spaces in Baltimore and Elliott City, Maryland. Its main indoor space, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater opened in 2014 after a $7M renovation of the Mercantile Bank Building, a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In addition, The Studio, is located next door on the fourth floor of the Merchants Club space and is used for educational programs, rehearsals and as an alternate performance space for CSC. They continue to perform outdoor every summer at the Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colorado Shakespeare Festival</span> Shakespeare festival in Boulder, Colorado

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is a professional acting company in association with the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was established in 1958, making it one of the oldest such festivals in the United States, and has roots going back to the early 1900s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stratford Shakespeare Festival production history</span>

This page describes the production history of the Stratford Festival.

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival (ISF) is held in Bloomington, Illinois, United States at Ewing Theatre and in Normal, Illinois, United States at the Center for Performing Arts Theatre at Illinois State University. The Festival began in 1978 and celebrated its 45th season in 2023. The Festival has traditionally presented three plays. Although all three may be Shakespeare plays, the Festival has also included different types of theater, such as Restoration comedy, Commedia dell'arte, and works by contemporary playwrights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival</span> Theatre festival in Tring, Hertfordshire

The Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival is, as the name implies, an annual festival dedicated to the plays of William Shakespeare. It takes place at the beginning of August at Pendley Manor, a hotel in Tring, Hertfordshire.

First Folio Theatre was a not-for-profit theater company affiliated with the Actors' Equity Association. Founded in 1996, First Folio, originally named First Folio Shakespeare Festival, was located on the grounds of the Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook, Illinois, United States. First Folio utilized the "Folio Method" as developed by Patrick Tucker, who first introduced his approach to American actors, directors and teachers in a series of workshops sponsored by the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City at The Shakespeare Center beginning in 1982, which led to an awakened interest in the First Folio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival</span>

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) is a non-profit professional theater company based in Garrison, New York. The festival runs a roughly fourteen-week repertory season each year, operating under a large open-air theater tent. Its productions attract a total audience of about 50,000 from the Hudson Valley, New York City, and 40 US states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maynardville Open-Air Theatre</span> Outdoor theatre in Cape Town, South Africa

The Maynardville Open-Air Theater is an outdoor theatre in Maynardville Park, Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa. It seats 720 people and is known for its annual Shakespeare in the Park plays.

Terrence O’Brien is an American theatre director. O'Brien is a graduate of University of Notre Dame, and received advanced training in acting and directing at American Conservatory Theater, A.C.T. in San Francisco. He is the Founding Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which began in 1987 with a modest outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, produced in cooperation with the 29th Street Project. In 1988, the Festival moved to Boscobel, a Hudson River museum estate in Garrison, New York. Once in its new home and under a big tent, the festival grew dramatically, from its first season audience of 230 to 37,000 in 2010. Dedicated to producing the plays of Shakespeare with an economy of style that focuses its energy and resources on script, actors, and audience, the festival draws theater-goers from the tri-state area and beyond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespeare by the Sea, Los Angeles</span> American theatre company

Shakespeare by the Sea is a nonprofit organization that was launched in 1998 by Producing Artistic Director Lisa Coffi. Shakespeare by the Sea offers a free repertory season that runs for ten weeks throughout Los Angeles and Orange County. All performances are admission free. Each summer, the company tours about 20 cities for as many as 40 performances.

Erika Chong Shuch is an American theatrical performer, director, choreographer, and educator based in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared on stages in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, DC, and Seoul, South Korea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Shakespeare</span> 20th/21st-century American theatre company

Georgia Shakespeare was a professional, not-for-profit theatre company located in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States on the campus of Oglethorpe University from 1985-2014. Georgia Shakespeare produced three plays annually, primarily between June and November. Twelve educational programs were developed in the history of Georgia Shakespeare. These programs included "The High School Tour", a "High School Acting Competition", "Camp Shakespeare", a "High School Conservatory", a "No Fear Shakespeare" training program for educators, after school residencies, school tours, student matinees, classes for professionals, and in-school workshops. At its peak, it welcomed 60,000 patrons annually to its performances.

Santa Cruz Shakespeare is an annual professional theatre festival in Santa Cruz, California, founded in 2014. Its predecessor, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, lost the financial support of its host and sponsor, the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2013. Members of the original company and board immediately began fundraising and raised enough money to relaunch the festival as an independent entity.

Julia Reinhard Lupton is an American scholar of William Shakespeare and renaissance literature. She is a professor of English at the University of California, Irvine and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her scholarship.

References

  1. ↑ "New Swan Shakespeare Festival website"
  2. ↑ Hodgins, Paul (August 26, 2012), "Long-awaited theater finally rises on UC Irvine campus", Orange County Register
  3. 1 2 Miller, Michael (June 19, 2013), "Stage must rise before curtain", Daily Pilot, archived from the original on June 24, 2013
  4. ↑ Okwuosa, Fallon, UC Irvine's School of Arts Moves 15-Ton Theatre For Shakespeare Festival, News 4 Southern California
  5. 1 2 "New Swan Shakespeare Festival returns to UC Irvine", Orange County Register , July 7, 2014
  6. ↑ O'Connor, Sarah (August 15, 2014), "New Swan's 'Romeo & Juliet' is to Die For", New University
  7. ↑ Jow, Lauren (July 21, 2012), "Shakespeare Under the Stars to open at UC Irvine", Orange County Register
  8. ↑ Iliff, Anna (June 21, 2013), "'Intimate' Shakespearian experience at New Swan", Orange County Register
  9. ↑ "State Arts Council Gets an Earful at Listening Tour Stop in OC". Arts Orange County.
  10. ↑ Beers, Joel (August 7, 2014), "A Tale of Two Shakespeares", OC Weekly
  11. ↑ Titus, Tom (July 2, 2015), "On Theater: UCI bringing Shakespeare into modern age", Daily Pilot, Los Angeles Times
  12. ↑ Titus, Tom (July 7, 2016), "On Theater: UCI brushing up its Shakespeare", Daily Pilot, Los Angeles Times
  13. ↑ Marchese, Eric (August 11, 2016), "New time and place make 'As You Like It' sparkle", Orange County Register
  14. ↑ Titus, Tom (June 29, 2017), "On Theater: UCI's sixth New Swan Theater festival will feature 'Tempest' and 'Shrew'", Daily Pilot, Los Angeles Times
  15. ↑ Marchese, Eric (August 8, 2017), "'Tempest' in Irvine sweeps us to a land where magic is the norm", Orange County Register
  16. ↑ Marchese, Eric (August 1, 2017), "In Irvine, 'Shrew' pits rebel '70s against conformist '80s", Orange County Register
  17. ↑ Titus, Tom (July 2, 2018), "Shakespeare under the stars returns to UCI with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'The Winter's Tale'", Los Angeles Times
  18. ↑ McNulty, Charles (August 7, 2018), "Review: 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with a lesbian twist at New Swan Shakespeare in Irvine", Los Angeles Times

33°38′41″N117°50′34″W / 33.6447°N 117.8428°W / 33.6447; -117.8428

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.