UIC School of Theatre and Music

UIC School of Theatre and Music just hosted the first-ever UIC Unreal Fest Game Jam! Congrats to our winners of the community choice award, Avery Chang, Justine Arizbal, and Mit Patel, who’s hard work and dedication to the craft of developing video games were recognized last weekend. All participants were invited to attend Unreal Fest 2026 in Chicago and will had the opportunity to have their games played by professionals in the video game industry.

Special thanks to our sponsors Epic Games, Cleverlike Studios, Lenovo, and Unreal Fest, for providing students with this incredible opportunity!

# games

This past weekend, UIC Theatre and Music welcomed students from Chicago and beyond to the first-ever UIC Unreal Fest Game Jam! Students were given a demonstration of the UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) and given 48 hours to build a working game from concept to finished product. Thanks to Lenovo, Epic Games, and Unreal Fest participants were able to use cutting-edge laptops and given passes to Unreal Fest 2026 in Chicago. 
 
Thank you to our supporting partners: Epic Games, CleverlikeStudios, Lenovo, and Unreal Fest, for providing such a wonderful opportunity for students to show off their creative and technical skills!  
 

Our Summer Winds program started this week with our largest ensemble yet! Can’t wait to see the great work these folks do! ☀️

After 32 years of service to the UIC School of Theatre and Music, we celebrate the retirement of Theatre Operations Coordinator and UIC Theatre alum Neal McCollam 🎭

Thank you, Neal, for your dedication, generosity, and lasting contributions to the School of Theatre and Music. Your impact is unparalleled, and we wish you the very best in retirement ❤️

Read more about Neal’s journey and legacy at UIC through the link below.

https://theatreandmusic.uic.edu/news/thank-you-neal-mccollam/

Congratulations to the Class of 2026!

You’ve put in the hard work, and now it’s time to celebrate everything you’ve accomplished at the School of Theatre and Music. We’re proud of the artists, thinkers, and collaborators you’ve become and wish you great success in the next phase of your career.

We can’t wait to see what you do next!

🎓

UIC Music’s Amos Gillespie is being featured in the upcoming “You Can Dance If You Want To” concert with Lakeshore Rush—a Chicago-based ensemble dedicated to championing the music of living composers and forgotten chamber music masterpieces.

Three of Gillespie’s pieces will be performed: “The Entertainment of Being”, “Soul Food”, and “Maloik”. The concert is on May 29 at 6:30pm at RSVP at newmusicchicago.org

Tomorrow, we celebrate 36 graduating students from the UIC School of Theatre and Music 🎶🎭

This year marks a major milestone: our first graduating class of BMUS Music Education students! Congratulations to Evan, Gabrielle, Leon, and Lorenna—we can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make in classrooms, rehearsal spaces, and music programs everywhere. Your future students are lucky to have you!

Hi!! My name is Adriana (Adri) Andreolas (she/her) and I scenic designed Macbeth with Collette Pollard. I am a senior about to graduate from UIC’s Theater Design, Production, and Technology program with a focus in scenic design, stage management, and scenic painting!

My process for Macbeth was super interesting, as the only prompt that we got at the beginning was rope. To reflect the forest space and Burnam Wood, we were trying to figure out how to make trees out of rope, and found inspiration by art instillations showcasing rope unwinding, which is what you can see with the giant trees in the back of the set.

Diving more into our process our director, Yasen Peyankov, described his idea of Macbeth to be “post-apacolyptic, steampunk, madmax.” With this aesthetic, we wanted to portray, we designed lamps hanging from rope to be in the world of Macbeth.

The biggest struggle was figuring out how to make castles within this forest. We explored the idea of treetops coming down to create castle arches, and that ended up working for us. We split them up into four different sections to have different locations within different castles, which is why some looks only had certain arches down.

We also explored the ideas of the trees being climbable, and were able to do so by attaching some trees to the catwalks instead of the batons to make them secure and safe for use.

Macbeth was such a fun and challenging process, and I am so greatful to have gotten the chance to work with such a talented creative team, and cast of actors!

In Prof. Pollard’s THTR 450, students step beyond the classroom to experience Chicago’s theatre ecosystem—visiting spaces like and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Along the way, they get to connect with working professionals and learn what it takes to run these amazing spaces.

Special thanks to Mike Smallwood and Maria Delano for hosting us at the Lyric, and to Ben Jones and Clare Roche for leading our visits to the Harris and Pritzker Pavilion.