Shakespeare Santa Cruz
Shakespeare Santa Cruz strives to cultivate the imagination, wit, daring, and vision that the greatest playwrights demand of artists and audiences alike.
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.
Experience lively, innovative theatre performed in the spectacular outdoor Festival Glen and the intimate indoor Mainstage Theatre. Under the majestic redwoods of coastal California, see one of the top ten Shakespeare Festivals in the country.(as noted by USA Today, April 1999.)
