IRVINE : UCI Drama Dept. Chairman Resigns

Robert Cohen has resigned as chairman of the UC Irvine department of drama after holding the post for more than 21 years.

Cohen, 52, said Thursday that his successor would be elected by the drama faculty, “presumably within the next two weeks.”

The resignation, which he termed “absolutely amicable and something I’ve been planning to do for a couple of years,” was announced in a letter to his faculty colleagues on Jan. 31. He steps down, effective March 30, at the end of his current three-year term and will remain on the faculty as a professor of drama.

“I’m at a point in my life where I thought it would be good for me and for the department,” said Cohen, who founded the department in 1965 as a part-time assistant professor and has been its first and only chairman since the fall of 1969. “As we’ve grown, the administrative details have become more complicated. It will be good to relieve myself of those.”

Cohen said he and UCI drama professor Keith Fowler expect to be hired next week as the artistic co-directors of a professional theater in Los Angeles. He declined to identify the theater but said an official announcement would be made Tuesday after contracts are signed.

Cohen maintained that his resignation as UCI drama chairman was only “somewhat related” to those plans.

“I have many activities,” he noted, including directing at the Utah and Colorado Shakespeare festivals as well as writing. His latest book, “Acting in Shakespeare,” was published this year by Mayfield. He said he also is negotiating for a production of a recently written full-length play titled “The Prince,” about the 15th-Century Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli. Two of Cohen’s previous plays--”The Mobius Strip” and “The Death of Morris Biederman”--were produced during the 1970s.