Santa Cruz Shakespeares 2020 Season Announced

Santa Cruz Shakespeare is thrilled to announce its 2020 summer season, with repertory performances beginning July 7 and running through August 30 at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park.

Kicking us off, the first show of the season will once again be our non-Shakespeare offering. On the heels of recent farcical successes like The 39 Steps, and Pride and Prejudice, we are so excited to be presenting a play written by the greatest French farceur of all time, Georges Feydeau.

Widely acknowledged to be his masterpiece farce, the play is … A Flea in Her Ear a new version of Georges Feydeau’s Farce by David Ives starting July 7, 2020, directed by Melissa Rain Anderson.

Called by the late Harold Bloom “the greatest of all Shakespeare’s pure comedies”, this second production and first Shakespeare play will be Twelfth Night directed by Paul Mullins, starting on July 21. Paul Mullins is known to our audiences as the director of Pride and Prejudice, Love’s Labours Lost, and The 39 Steps.

The final mainstage show of the season and our second Shakespeare production begins with a shipwreck, though this is one created by design…more specifically by the magic of Prospero’s tempest.

The Tempest starts August 4 toying with art and its limitations, and asks an important question to everyone in this community and beyond: what is the true cost of releasing anger? Artistic Director Mike Ryan will be making his Santa Cruz Shakespeare directing debut at the helm of this production.

Artistic Director Mike Ryan frames the season by saying, “All of our 2020 plays center around someone (or someones) who are shipwrecked, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally, and sometimes in both ways. These stories ask questions about how we find our way past disaster, impotence, and emotional stagnancy to find fertile ground in renewed joy, love, and hope.”

SCS will soon announce it’s Fringe show and Fringe expanded free readings and will continue its “Free Youth Ticket” program, which offers those 18 and under, accompanied by a paying adult, a free groundling ticket to Twelfth Night.

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Member ticket pre-sale is on May 1 and general ticket sales go on May 15. A calendar will be online soon!