Santa Cruz Shakespeare seeks return to outdoors
Santa Cruz Shakespeare has announced tentative plans for a socially distanced, outdoor live season of two plays beginning in late July with the Mat Smart play, “The Agitators.” The twoperson play tells the story of the feisty duo, Fredrick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, who knew each other through 45 years as friends, allies and adversaries.
As agitators, they fought for racial justice and gender equality — and neither was content to let themselves or their country rest in complacency. “The Agitators” spans five decades and will be directed by Paul Mullins. It will star two long-time SCS performers, Patty Gallagher as Susan B. Anthony and Allen Gilmore as Fredrick Douglas.
Playing in repertory with this show will be “RII,” a three-person version of William Shakespeare’s “King Richard II.” Directed by Melissa Rain Anderson, Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s interpretation will be the first production of the play since its world premiere.
A “Critic’s Choice” pick when it premiered in Los Angeles, it’s been described as a “fast-paced exploration of divine right, capricious leadership and bloody insurrection.” No cast for “RII” has as yet been announced.
Explains SCS artistic director Mike Ryan, “When managing director Larry Mabrey and I looked at what seat reductions meant for our earned income, it became apparent that we would not be able to produce large-cast Shakespeare plays without significant losses.
Fortunately, he explained, the Audrey Stanley Grove is outdoors. It’s also large enough that by limiting the number of people attending any one performance, “we can easily seat nonaffiliated audience members more than 6 feet apart.” He expects that with more people getting vaccinated — and everyone wearing masks — “we are working toward a small, safe live repertory season.”
Ryan says SCS’s plan will require the City of Santa Cruz’s approval as well as approval by the
professional unions who work at Santa Cruz Shakespeare. Seating capacity, he notes, will likely drop from the current Grove capacity of 425 to about 175.
Because both “The Agitators” and “RII” will be recorded, Ryan also says that any patron who doesn’t feel comfortable going to the Grove in person can choose to watch them virtually on a paid streaming platform.
“We’ll be taking a hard look at the COVID situation starting the end of March and continuing through May,” he adds. “If, at any point, it seems that the outlook for July and August will not be significantly better that it is now, or if the city or our unions don’t approve our safety guidelines, we’ll pivot to an entirely virtual season.”
The same two plays would still be performed, with audiences viewing at home via Zoom.
Even before the two live productions in the Grove, Ryan says that last year’s successful “Undiscovered Shakespeare” series will start up again in June. In 2020 the theater company read through Shakespeare’s “War of the Roses” using Zoom.
This year, in conjunction with the UC Santa Cruz Shakespeare Workshop and Humanities Institute, Ryan says SCS “will tackle one of Shakespeare’s most fascinating — and vexing — plays: ‘Troilus & Cressida.’”
“Troilus” is set at the time of the Trojan War and deals with the fidelity, honor, romance, pretention and war.
For more details, call (831) 460-6399 or go to: www.santacruzshakespeare.org.
Contact Joanne Engelhardt at features@santacruzsentinel.com, she is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and Theatre Bay Area.