We’re talking to Charles Pasternak, entering his third season as Santa Cruz Shakespeare artistic director. Pasternak talks about the festival’s first musical offering, his choice of Pericles, which he is directing. He opens up about adding a fourth play in September, and his plans for expanding the season as far as it will go.
You’re adding a musical this season. Isn’t that Cabrillo Stage territory?
Charles Pasternak: I really do believe in a town like this a rising tide lifts all boats. If our musical does well, it will only excite more of our audience to go check out Cabrillo Stage, and perhaps for their audience that loves what they do and hasn’t been much interested in Shakespeare, offering them something musical will perhaps bring them into our theater. So I do not see any competition or negativity.
Talk about Into the Woods.
CP: It’s probably the musical I’ve known well the longest. My sister did it, I think, in eighth grade, and she played Little Red and I loved it. I love the original Broadway production.
I really do believe a season itself should be a piece of art, that all the plays I choose should be in conversation with each other, so that our audience that sees all the plays can be a part of that conversation. The conversation between Into the Woods and Midsummer seems so clear to me. I’ve had one or two people say to me, you know, for your first musical, you picked up, you picked a tough one, and it is tough, but we have a brilliant music director, Luke Shepherd, who is truly incredible.
And there’s more expansion with Master Harold as the fourth offering.
I think it’s a masterpiece. Fugard died this year. I was getting excited to produce a living playwright, but now I’m excited to honor his legacy so quickly. I have my eyes on continued expansion. Further down the line, I have my eyes on the possibility of adding another show maybe summer, maybe fall, I don’t know. We’re doing well, but we’re not sitting on our laurels. Two Shakespeares are always going to be our backbone. I’m not touching that—but as we add, I can offer more and more.
Maybe more Tennessee Williams?
The response to Menagerie was overwhelming. If there’s any Williams I have my eye on next, it might be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But I love Chekhov. We’ve done it once in our history. I love Shaw. We haven’t done it in ages. I love Noel Coward. And Thornton Wilder.
How might expansion work, especially given the outdoor setting of the Grove?
Yes! Ideally a year-round program and we’re working toward that. We already have a winter holiday show, A Christmas Carol. Expanding into the fall is one thing since we still have the space available, right? Finding out how we expand into the spring is more troublesome. For some months the weather won’t allow it. And we’re caretakers of the land. We winterize that whole space. It’s a huge amount of work.
What about the Colligan?
Because of the history of the Jewel, our audience loves it. I thought Julie did wonderful things. I have so much admiration for how she managed it. But it’s just not workable for us. The Colligan seats under 200, and for Christmas Carol we had an audience of 280 plus. So that’s a lot of seats lost. We’d have to up the price. We have to keep the doors open. We have to keep access available. We’re so lucky in the scope of this country to live in a community that loves and values its theater and its art. And that’s not true a lot of places. We’re going into our third straight year of record ticket sales. Our percentages right now are above last year’s.
You’re committed to repertory theater.
I think more theaters in this country would be doing better if they were to return to a real repertory model. I need to bring artists from outside Santa Cruz, because I want to present a world-class company, and I need to find them outside of it. But I want to find great artists in Santa Cruz as much as I can. I want to invest locally. And so finding Jordan [Best] and Lori [Schulman], realizing I had these two incredible artists in my backyard, and for our first musical, they were both excited and available.
I should make a distinction when I say every year we have a company of 20 plus actors, and what I’m talking about is formalizing a company in the range of, let’s say, 10 artists that I want back every year. So I don’t want the community to think they’re going to see the exact same 20 plus people every year. They’re not. But a core group that will return, those who like to work with each other, that bring positivity to this theater, that get to invest in this community, that love this community. And know how to work on this stage.
This year we do four shows on one company. Artistically that company gets to stretch themselves. You get to see Mike Ryan in one kind of role, and then in another role.
I think one reason this theater has done so well is because it’s had actor/artistic directors leading it. The community has gotten invested in Paul Whitworth, and has gotten invested in Mike Ryan, partly because they lead the company, and I hope to be in that same vein. And I think that that model can extend to the other artists in the company.
You’re taking a chance on Pericles, aren’t you?
Well, I hope the production will convince you, but I will say that I like Pericles, Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline, this trio of late plays that go beyond comedy and tragedy, that go beyond black and white, that go into the gray. Part of Shakespeare’s greatness is always his ambiguity to me, and these three plays magnify that ambiguity. And they’re about forgiveness, and they’re about rebirth and they’re about miracles. Pericles punishes all extremities. There are extremities in play, from its opening ugliness. And in the end, it takes sacrifice. It takes two people seeing each other across the divided years, recognizing each other, a family coming back together, a literal rebirth. I think there is a true miracle in the play, and it’s a fabulous sort of fantasy adventure. Six countries, two shipwrecks, two storms at sea. I think it’s magnificent.
I’m often interested in the lesser-knowns. But I have a financial responsibility to this company to cover my risk, right? So Pericles, I accept, probably won’t sell as well, but it’s playing behind Midsummer and Into the Woods. Now I hope it’s a surprise hit, but if it’s not, even if it just does okay, we’ve gotten Into the Woods.
Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s 2025 season runs July 18–Sept. 20 in repertory with Into the Woods, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pericles and Athol Fugard’s Master Harold…and the Boys. santacruzshakespeare.org
Read Christina Waters’ cover story about Santa Cruz’s Summer of Sondheim
