“To be or not to be, that is the question” facing Shakespeare Santa Cruz today, as the theater company decides whether to continue its 28-year run.
“To be or not to be, that is the question” facing Shakespeare Santa Cruz today, as the theater company decides whether to continue its 28-year run. The decision will be made during a media call between the company’s artistic director Marco Barricelli and UCSC Dean of the Arts David Yager. And the prospects are not good.
Though the company has operated at a loss for several years, this has been absorbed by UCSC. But now, however, with UCSC facing its own financial straits, it is unlikely that it will be able to continue funding the company’s productions. Chancellor George Blumenthal has already stated that the company falls outside the parameters of the university’s core mission, which is teaching and research.
Santa Cruz now faces the loss of one of its greatest cultural assets if the company cannot be resuscitated. Apart from performing traditional theater productions, including almost all of Shakespeare’s plays, since 1997 the company catered to families with small children, creating special holiday productions of such children’s classics as “The Wind and the Willows” and “Cinderella.” As of today, however, Santa Cruz theater for both children and adults may be nothing more than fond memories of better days past. Perhaps they can take solace in that line from the Winter’s Tale, “What ‘s gone and what’s past help should be past grief.”
Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
