Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s 2025 Summer and Fall Festival Tickets on Sale May 1
Four Productions, Including a Musical, Offered July through September at the Audrey Stanley Grove
April 15, 2025 – SANTA CRUZ, CA—Santa Cruz Shakespeare (SCS), a nationally recognized professional theatre company in Santa Cruz County with deep local roots that go back more than 40 years, today announced tickets will go on sale May 1 for its 2025 Summer and Fall Festival.
Performances will take place July 13 through September 20 in the Audrey Stanley Grove (The Grove) in Santa Cruz’s DeLaveaga Park. Tickets will be available at santacruzshakespeare.org.
Following two years of record-breaking ticket sales, the 2025 festival will include four plays running in rotating repertory: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, the musical Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, Pericles by William Shakespeare and George Wilkins, and “Master Harold” …and the boys by Athol Fugard. The 2025 season theme is “No One is Alone”.
“The four masterpieces we’re producing this season all examine the threads that tie us together,” said Charles Pasternak, Artistic Director of Santa Cruz Shakespeare. “In each of these plays, the world is torn apart – sometimes quite literally – but knitted anew by recognition. Recognition of ourselves in each other, in our need for each other. None of us is an island. We need each other – now more than ever – and through both laughter and heartbreak, this season looks to bring our incredible community closer together.”
ABOUT THE PRODUCTIONS:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Director: Paul Mullins
Opening Night: July 18, 2025, 8 p.m.
One of Shakespeare’s most famous and beloved works, Midsummer is a perfect evening of theatre, filled with magic, love, wild laughter and…an ass. In the mystical forest of Arden, the world is pulled apart and woven back together over the course of a single miraculous night. Fleeing lovers and earnest workingmen stumble into the magic of a fairy kingdom at war with itself. Hijinks and heartbreak ensue. Most famously, the amateur actor Nick Bottom is transformed into an ass before becoming the lover of the Fairy Queen, Titania. But by morning, all is set aright, and we return to Athens for a trio of marriages and an amateur performance for the ages. One of the funniest plays ever written, Midsummer celebrates our deep need to gather together, sacrifice and celebrate.
Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine
Director: Jerry Lee
Opening Night: July 19, 2025, 8 p.m.
The first summer musical produced by Santa Cruz Shakespeare and Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 32 years and a brilliant pairing with Midsummer, Sondheim’s masterpiece sees another disparate group journeying into the forest, pursuing a wide range of desires, from a simple visit to grandmother’s house, a decent price for a cow or the magical ingredients to cure a curse of childlessness. Woods honors the various fairy tales it is drawn from and turns them on their head. It subverts expectations, surprising at every music-filled turn with pathos and humor. SCS’s season theme is drawn directly from the gorgeous Act II song of the same name, “No One is Alone.” Woods is Sondheim’s incredible meditation on just that – messy, painful or beautiful, as it may be.
Pericles by William Shakespeare and George Wilkins
Director: Charles Pasternak
Opening Night: July 31, 2025, 8 p.m.
Shakespeare’s brilliant late romance continues the 2025 festival’s sweep into the mythic. The first half of this rarely performed play follows Prince Pericles’ incredible journey through multiple kingdoms, wild adventures, desperate escapes; a magnificent love affair, a pair of storms at sea and a single shipwreck. And that’s just part one. The second half shifts some fourteen years later to Pericles’ daughter, Marina, who must survive her own trials: an assassination attempt, an abduction by pirates, the violence of a brothel. By the power of her kindness, wit and virtue, she rises above each of these dangers, finally meeting her father. The reunion of Pericles and Marina is one of the most beautiful scenes Shakespeare ever wrote. We cannot survive alone; the coming together of father and daughter is the rebirth of a world. The play ends, indeed, with another incredible rebirth; in love and unity, miracles are possible.
“Master Harold” …and the boys by Athol Fugard
Director: Rebecca Haley Clark
Opening Night: September 5, 2025, 7 p.m.
Following the epic sweep of the summer season, “Master Harold” snaps us into the deeply intimate and intense. Set in the apartheid era of South Africa, we find ourselves in the tea shop of Harold’s family. Young Hally, who is white, spends the afternoon after school in the shop with two of the family’s servants, Sam and Willie, who are black. Over the course of 90 minutes, we bear witness to the shifting relationship between all of them; a relationship built both on love and respect, as well as one built on bigotry and institutionalized racism. Fugard’s autobiographical masterpiece is both joyous and brutal, with an ending that will leave you both stunned and inspired. It brings home SCS’s 2025 festival theme “No One is Alone” with a beautiful recognition – one that would lead Fugard to becoming one of the great playwrights of the 20th century.
Playwright Fugard’s death in March of this year was a loss to Santa Cruz Shakespeare and the larger theatre community. SCS is especially grateful to produce Fugard’s work this year and honor his legacy.
The 2025 Festival will also include SCS’s Fringe Series, including two staged readings and two performances of its apprentice show happening Tuesday nights in August at 7 p.m. Price is pay-what-you-will.
The seasonal box office opens for phone orders beginning May 1. Box office hours will be Tuesday through Friday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Call 831-460-6399.
SCS’s performance calendar can be found here: https://santacruzshakespeare.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Calendar-for-Brochure.jpg
Learn more at: https://santacruzshakespeare.org/season-2025/
Santa Cruz Shakespeare Membership
Become an annual member of SCS to support the entire 2025 season and ShakesEDU. SCS Memberships range from $50-$10,000 with tiered benefits including pre-sales, ticket discounts, early admission, free parking, free food and drink, cushioned seats, and other benefits. For those under 25 years old, join the Hathaway Club and receive one half price regular ticket to any three shows. Learn more: https://santacruzshakespeare.org/member/
About Santa Cruz Shakespeare
Featuring professional actors from around the country and inspired by deep local roots that go back more than 40 years, Santa Cruz Shakespeare stages bold productions of the plays of Shakespeare and other great playwrights that stimulate audiences’ senses and spark their imagination.
