Santa Cruz Shakespeare Announces 2019 Summer Festival Productions

Santa Cruz Shakespeare is thrilled to announce its 2019 summer season, with repertory performances beginning July 9 and running through September 1 at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park.

SCS will captivate audiences for its sixth season with summer performances that offer comedic thrills, mystic revelations, and modern twists. The festival starts with Kate Hamill's off-beat and unique adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with performances beginning July 9 and directed by returning director Paul Mullins (Hamlet, The 39 Steps, and last season's Love's Labour's Lost). The second mainstage production is Shakespeare's zany showdown The Comedy of Errors starting July 23, directed by acclaimed local director Kirsten Brandt, (previously The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2014).

The festival's final repertory production starting August 6 will be Shakespeare's fairy-tale romance The Winter's Tale directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges (Venus in Fur, 2018) and featuring nationally-renowned Shakespearean actor Ian Merrill Peakes as King Leontes. All productions run in repertory after opening. Santa Cruz Shakespeare will also continue the tradition of showcasing the season's intern acting company with its celebratory Fringe production. Tickets go on sale May 15, 2019 with a Santa Cruz Shakespeare Member pre-sale starting May 1, and can be purchased online at santacruzshakespeare.org.

Artistic Director Mike Ryan frames the season by saying, "The plays of our 2019 Season celebrate the rare and precious gift of second chances. From slapstick to high drama, mistaken identity to personal discovery, SCS will enthrall audiences with stories that lead us towards hope."

SCS introduced Student Matinee Week in 2018 and welcomed 1000 students from Santa Cruz County and beyond with free and subsidized tickets to Romeo & Juliet. In 2019, students will have access to the repertory company's production of The Comedy of Errors on August 28, 29 and September 3, 4, 5. "The ultimate goal for this program is to make sure every high school student in Santa Cruz County will have seen a live, professional production of Shakespeare by the time they graduate," says Ryan.
Santa Cruz Shakespeare will once again offer a "Free Youth Ticket," a program initiated in 2015 to encourage the introduction of Shakespeare to the next generation. The 2019 season will offer to those 18 and under accompanied by a paying adult will receive a free groundling ticket to The Comedy of Errors.

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