Venue: Barclay Theatre
Town: Irvine, US

The Irvine Barclay Theatre, often referred to as The Barclay, is a 755-seat performing arts venue in Irvine, California, located on the campus of the University of California, Irvine. Jointly owned by the city and university, it opened in 1990 and has hosted various musicians, bands, plays, and guest speakers. San Francisco-based architecture firm Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons designed the theater. Advocacy for a community theater in Irvine first arose in the 1970s; the city itself was incorporated in 1971. In 1986, a group of private investors as well as officials from the city and the University of California, Irvine formed a nonprofit called the Irvine Barclay Theatre Operating Company. Richard Barclay, a real estate developer, became the namesake after donating $1 million to the project. The total cost of the theater's creation and construction was $17.4 million with $11.3 million of funding provided by the city, $4.3 million from private donors, and $1.8 million from UC Irvine. The university also provided 2.3 acres (0.93 ha) of its land for the site of the facility. Media members previewed the venue ahead of its opening ceremony on September 30, 1990. The Los Angeles Times gave the theater a positive review, praising its design. On March 23, 2004, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the inaugural UCI Citizen Peacebuilding Award in a ceremony at the Barclay Theatre, where he thereafter gave a speech on environmental sustainability. During the speech, Gorbachev criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and at one point received a standing ovation from the crowd. Upon its first awarding, the university named the accolade after Gorbachev. In 2012, Elvis Costello performed a concert at the Barclay. In 2015, the Barclay Theatre hired former Segerstrom Center for the Arts president and CEO Jerry Mandel to be its president. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the theater closed indefinitely. During its closure, the theater organization spent over $2 m