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.
[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.
[citation needed] 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.
[8] In 2013 the New Swan Shakespeare Festival was presented with an Orange County Arts Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Built Environment.
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).