When art taps you on the shoulder

Marianne Manalang was in the middle of enjoying a pizza at UC Irvine’s outdoor food court last week when a woman descended on her with an urgent message.

“Think not I love him, though I ask for him,” the stranger implored, taking a seat next to hers. “‘Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well. But what care I for words?”

After a pause to let the language sink in, first-year drama major Kristen Daniels flashed a smile and declared, “Congratulations! You’ve been Shakespeared.”

She handed a card containing those words to Manalang and then another to fellow classmate Andrew Luna, who had bemusedly taken a seat at the table in the middle of Phebe’s monologue from “As You Like It.”

As Daniels, who wore a yellow “Shaken Shakespeare” T-shirt, continued on her rounds, Manalang said she hadn’t heard of the new campus program to spread the Bard’s text in unlikely places. That said, she hadn’t been too alarmed by the impromptu performance.

“I mean, we’re in a college, so anything can happen,” she said with a laugh.

In a nutshell, that’s the mission of Illuminations, the new UCI arts initiative that oversees Shaken Shakespeare and other cultural offerings around campus.

The program, announced last year by Chancellor Howard Gillman, offers small grants for projects designed by faculty, staff and students.

To be accepted by Illuminations, a proposal must fit four basic criteria: It must primarily target UCI undergraduates, charge no admission to them, include and welcome all members of the campus community, and focus on arts and culture.

English professor Julia Lupton has been assigned to lead the initiative, while a faculty and student council reviews all proposals and allots the grants.

The Shakespeare project, overseen by drama professor Jane Page and begun this spring, also included the Shakespeare Shorts Festival, which featured in April and May miniature versions of “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

The budget for Illuminations’ first two years is about $100,000.

Although Illuminations may be the chancellor’s brainchild, he plans to take a hands-off approach, at least for now.

“Someday, there might come a time when I have a notion of what I’d like to see,” Gillman said. “But I get to propose a lot of things on campus just because I have the corner office, and in this case, I want to make sure that most of what’s happening is happening because faculty and students are coming up with good ideas.”

*

‘My life in a few months’

By the time Gillman and Lupton formally launched Illuminations, some ideas were waiting for them.

One was the Service Workers Project, a theater production in which campus employees played themselves alongside actors from the student Brown Bag Theater Co. Since the project had been in the planning before the program started, Lupton and her team joined it in progress.

The first three days of May, Brown Bag presented “Contra La Corriente (Against the Current),” a play at the Robert Cohen Theatre.

Amanda Novoa, the student leader of Brown Bag and co-director of the show, began doing research for the show last spring on a recommendation from faculty advisor Lonnie Alcarez, who had long dreamed of crafting a show to spotlight UCI’s groundskeepers, janitors and other rarely celebrated employees.

For months, Novoa and her fellow troupe members held meetings with service workers and compiled a script from their stories. Among those who appeared in the show was Humberto Xocua-Andrade, a campus groundskeeper for 11 years, who played a character partly based on himself.

Xocua-Andrade, who helped Novoa round up other service workers, said he had never acted onstage before. Some of his colleagues, he said, were wary of sharing stories about their personal and professional lives. When he finally saw the script that Brown Bag had assembled, though, he found himself flabbergasted.

“The first time I was reading that, I was so excited, because this is exactly what happened to me,” he said. “This is my life. How can someone know my life in a few months?”

*

Freshmen, meet Franco

Already, Illuminations has announced some of the grant recipients for the upcoming school year. Lupton has planned an appearance by actor James Franco, set to take place at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Sept. 29.

Comparative literature professor Adriana Johnson proposed a Latin American film series that would feature one campus screening per quarter, coupled by a visit from the film’s director, while science education director Brad Hughes is planning Market to Table, a program that would combine culinary arts with video production.

In addition to the campus council, Illuminations operates a UCI Community Arts Council, chaired by arts Dean Stephen Barker and humanities Dean Georges Van Den Abbeele. It will oversee half a dozen or more events each year.

Among the partners on the council are Segerstrom Center for the Arts President Terry Dwyer, Laguna Art Museum Executive Director Malcolm Warner and Pacific Symphony President John Forsyte.

Forsyte’s group has one event lined up for next week: Dance and media arts professor John Crawford plans to install a video booth outside the campus’ Crystal Cove Auditorium. Visitors to the booth can select music tracks and record themselves dancing alongside onscreen performers, complete with special effects.

The current academic year is the first of three planned so far for Illuminations. After that period is over, Gillman said, UCI officials will evaluate the program and decide whether to keep it going.

“My plan is for this to exist in perpetuity and just get bigger and better as it matures,” he said.