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 spark alive through the pandemic, many found themselves forced to incorporate technology into their work in new and exciting ways. While Claire Trevor School of the Arts students, faculty and staff welcome the return to live performances and exhibitions, they come to this new stage wielding skills that make them more resilient, marketable and, yes, even more creative.
Acting Alone In this fall’s production of Human Error, transfer student in drama Chris Hathaway plays Heather, a wife and mother who undergoes in-vitro fertilization and accidentally ends up pregnant with another couple’s baby. The biological parents are at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Heather and her husband. 6
Although the script is laugh-out-loud funny, Hathaway performed to empty seats and silence in the Robert Cohen Theatre over the course of nine weeks in the spring. She stood in front of a green screen with a lone camera recording her performance. Off to the side, her cell phone allowed her to see other cast members who were similarly sequestered in their own individual studio spaces across the school. “I’m so eager to have people see Human Error, and I hope it looks like it was easy to do,” says Jane Page, professor of drama and director of the play. In fact, nothing about it was easy, from the set-up of actors in individual spaces, to the fact that Broadway cinematographer Mark Ciglar spent two months editing the actors together into scenes and replacing the green screen with relevant backdrops.
“There are times in life when you’re going to have to act alone...”
