"Shakespeare Santa Cruz strives to cultivate the imagination, wit, daring, and vision that the greatest playwrights demand of artists and audiences alike."
About Shakespeare Santa Cruz
Shakespeare Santa Cruz is a professional repertory company in residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Our Festival was founded in 1981 and continues to be held annually each summer at UC Santa Cruz. Plays are held indoors on the UCSC Theatre Arts Mainstage and outdoors among the redwoods in the Festival Glen. Bringing in professional actors, directors and designers from throughout the country, the Company's season runs from mid-July through August and features four plays presented in repertory. Hailed by USA Today as “one of the nation’s top ten most influential” Shakespeare companies, SSC interprets the works of William Shakespeare through a contemporary lens and introduces our audiences to the newer work of American playwrights.
Since its founding, the company's artistic directors have been Audrey Stanley, Michael Edwards, Danny Scheie, Risa Brainin, and Paul Whitworth. In 1997, Artistic Director Paul Whitworth introduced the annual Winter Holiday season, a now annual tradition, modeled after the British pantomimes (or “pantos”) of his youth. In keeping with the tradition of Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s fresh takes on the classics, the holiday pantos, are original works written by playwright Kate Hawley and based on traditional fairy tales and children's literature.
What is a Repertory Company?
True repertory companies are becoming rare in regional theatre and continues to be an exciting and dynamic way to enjoy multiple plays within a season. Shakespeare Santa Cruz remains one of the only true repertory theatre companies in Northern California. Within a repertory company the majority of the actors appear in more than one play, often in dramatically diverse roles, alternating which play is performed from night to night.
Education Programs
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 Lysistratia, The Antipodes, Fools in the Forest, and The Mock-Tempest. Shakespeare to Go is an educational outreach program - and recipient of NEA funding - featuring University of California Santa Cruz Theatre 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.
