Shakespeare Santa Cruz

Shakespeare Santa Cruz is a professional theatre Festival founded in 1981 and held annually on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz.cite web |url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121876098005742875.html?mod=googlenews_wsj |title=Greasepaint under the Redwoods |accessdate=2008-08-15 |publisher=Wall Street Journal |date=2008-08-15] Plays by Shakespeare and other great dramatists are performed indoors on the UCSC Theatre Arts Mainstage and outdoors in a redwood grove. 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, Michael Edwards, Danny Scheie, Risa Brainin, Paul Whitworth, and Marco Berricelli. Some of the rising theatre stars who have worked at SSC are: David Baker, Bryan Cranston, Maria Dizzia, Dan Donohue, 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 outreach program - and recipient of National Endowment for the Arts (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.

eason History

* 1981
** The Taming of the Shrew
* 1982
** A Midsummer Night's Dream
* 1983
** Merry Wives of Windsor
** Macbeth
* 1984
** Henry IV, Part 1
** The Tempest
* 1985
** As You Like It
** Hamlet
** Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (by Tom Stoppard)
* 1986
** Twelfth Night
** King Richard II
** A Life in the Theatre (by David Mamet)
* 1987
** Much Ado About Nothing
** King Henry V
** Company (by Stephen Sondheim)
* 1988
** The Comedy of Errors
** Julius Caesar
** Anthony and Cleopatra
** Titus Andronicus
* 1989
** Love's Labour's Lost
** Romeo and Juliet
** Once in a Lifetime (by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart)
* 1990
** The Winter's Tale
** Othello
** Amadeus (by Peter Shaffer)
* 1991
** A Midsummer Night's Dream
** Measure for Measure
** Waiting for Godot (by Samuel Beckett)
** Our Town (by Thorton Wilder)
* 1992
** The Taming of the Shrew
** Macbeth
** A Doll's House (by Henrik Ibsen)
* 1993
** The Comedy of Errors
** All's Well That Ends Well
** Doctor Faustus (by Christopher Marlowe)
** Damn Yankees (by Douglass Wallop, George Abbott, Richard Adler, and Jerry Ross)
* 1994
** The Merchant of Venice
** Merry Wives of Windsor
** The Rape of Tamar (by Tirso de Molina)
* 1995
** The Tempest
** King Lear
** The Dresser (by Ronald Harwood)
* 1996
** Twelfth Night
** Pericles
** Tartuffe (by Molière)
* 1997
** As You Like It
** King Richard III
** The Forest (by Alexander Ostrovsky)
** Wind in the Willows (by Kenneth Grahame)
* 1998
** Much Ado About Nothing
** Othello
** The Marriage of Figaro (by Pierre Beaumarchais)
** Wind in the Willows (by Kenneth Grahame)
* 1999
** Romeo and Juliet
** The Two Gentlemen of Verona
** Arms and the Man (by George Bernard Shaw)
** Cinderella (by Kate Hawley & Gregg Coffin)
* 2000
** Cymbeline
** Love's Labour's Lost
** Kean (by Jean-Paul Sartre)
** Cinderella (by Kate Hawley & Gregg Coffin)
* 2001
** A Midsummer Night's Dream
** Macbeth
** She Stoops to Conquer (by Oliver Goldsmith)
** Gretel and Hansel (by Kate Hawley)
* 2002
** Coriolanus
** Merry Wives of Windsor
** The Sea Gull (by Anton Chekhov)
** Gretel and Hansel (by Kate Hawley)
* 2003
** The Comedy of Errors
** Hamlet
** Private Lives (by Noel Coward)
** Emperor's New Clothes (by Brad Caroll)
* 2004
** The Taming of the Shrew
** The Tamer Tamed (by John Fletcher)
** Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (by Edward Albee)
** Lysistrata (by Aristophanes)
** The Princess and the Pea (by Kate Hawley)
* 2005
** Twelfth Night
** The Winter's Tale
** Engaged (by W. S. Gilbert)
** Cinderella (by Kate Hawley & Gregg Coffin)
* 2006
** As You Like It
** King Lear
** Pygmalion (by George Bernard Shaw)
** Sleeping Beauty (by Kate Hawley)
* 2007
** Much Ado About Nothing
** The Tempest
** Playboy of the Western World (by J. M. Synge)
** Endgame (by Samuel Beckett)
** The Princess and the Pea (by Kate Hawley)
* 2008
** All's Well That Ends Well
** Romeo and Juliet
** Bach at Leipzig (by Itamar Moses)
** Burn This (by Lanford Wilson)
** Wind in the Willows (by Kenneth Grahame)

References

External links

* [http://shakespearesantacruz.org/ Official website]
* [http://edition.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Arts/9907/16/shakespeare.santacruz/?related A 1999 CNN.com article on the festival]