By Wallace Baine for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, 29 April, 2015
As presumptuous as it might sound, you can now draw a straight line between William Shakespeare and what will happen this summer in Santa Cruz, and call it a historic landmark in social progress.
Consider that when Shakespeare was drawing breath 400 years ago, he watched his plays performed on stage by companies consisting entirely of male actors. Even the female roles – from Juliet to Ophelia to Lady Macbeth – were commonly played by boys. Call it perfect gender inequity.
Fast forward to 2015, and the new season of Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the still new theater company stitched together from the remnants of the now defunct Shakespeare Santa Cruz. SCS artistic director Mike Ryan, in his first season as sole artistic director, is instituting a new policy in which the acting company of the new summer season will consist of an equal number of male and female actors. Call it perfect gender equity.
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