Shakespeare Santa Cruz - History

History

Shakespeare Santa Cruz was founded in 1981 and performs annually on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Plays by Shakespeare and other great dramatists are performed indoors on the UCSC Theater Arts Mainstage and outdoors in the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen. Bringing in professional actors, directors and designers from throughout the country, the Company's season runs from July to early September and presents three or four plays that run concurrently in repertory six days a week (no performance on Mondays). With a mission to “cultivate the imagination, wit, daring, and vision that the greatest playwrights demand of artists and audiences alike," SSC seeks to present a festival of theatre which showcases contemporary approaches to directing, designing and acting. Since its founding, the company's artistic directors have been Audrey Stanley (1982-86), Michael Edwards (1987-92), Danny Scheie (1993-95), Risa Brainin, Paul Whitworth (1996-2007), and Marco Barricelli (2008–). Some of the rising theatre stars who have worked at SSC are: David Baker, Bryan Cranston, Maria Dizzia, Caitlin FitzGerald, Dan Donohue, Peter Jacobson, Reg Rogers, and Michael Stuhlbarg.

In 1997, Artistic Director Paul Whitworth introduced the SSC annual Winter Holiday season. In keeping with the tradition of Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s fresh take on the classics, the holiday shows are original musicals written for SSC by playwright Kate Hawley with music composed by Gregg Coffin, Craig Bohmler and Adam Wernick. A fusion of the traditions of the British pantomime and the American musical, Cinderella, Gretel and Hansel, The Princess and the Pea and Sleeping Beauty are based on traditional fairy tales and appeal to audiences of all ages. The winter season performs in November and December.

In addition to the summer repertory season and the holiday show, Shakespeare Santa Cruz has two performance programs which seek to engage student actors with Shakespearean and other classical texts---the summer Fringe show and the Shakespeare to Go program. The Fringe show is an opportunity for the summer Company's acting interns to perform their own production in the Glen two nights each summer. Past productions include Lysistrata, The Antipodes, Fools in the Forest, and The Mock-Tempest. Shakespeare to Go is an educational engagement program - and recipient of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding - featuring University of California Santa Cruz Theater Arts students who tour local schools in the spring performing one-hour versions of one of the full-length plays to be featured in the summer repertory season. Additionally, Shakespeare to Go presents a limited number of free public performances.

The festival is responsible for supporting itself, but has recently run deficits, which were paid by the University of California. In 2008, with California's budget crisis having resulted in reduced funding, the university could no longer afford to cover these debts. An agreement was reached that if the theater could raise $300,000, it could continue operation. Within 10 days of the agreement's announcement, over $400,000 was raised.