Shakespeare Santa Cruz Fundraiser Makes Strides
Dec 18, 2008, by | Read more: News
Halfway through emergency drive, donations reach two-thirds mark
Leave it to a theater company to almost get snuffed out in the most dramatic way possible. Fans of Shakespeare Santa Cruz were in a frenzy Monday morning following news that it’s curtains for the company if it does not raise $300,000 by Monday, Dec. 22. “It’s pretty dramatic. I can hardly believe it myself,” says Marcus Cato, SSC’s managing director.
Though the task sounds like a very tall order, by Thursday morning, roughly the halfway point in the emergency fundraiser, the company reports that it has collected $207,451 and is more than two-thirds of the way to its goal.
Though the deadline and the figure were stipulated by UCSC, Cato is plenty sympathetic to the school’s plight. After years of absorbing the festival’s deficit, the university called for drastic action in order to minimize the damage that the state budget will inevitably inflict on the school. Acting Dean of the Division of the Arts David Evan Jones still doesn’t know the specifics, but he says it’s all but certain that classes will be cut, and entire minors and concentrations could go on the chopping block. “It would be a great loss for UCSC to see Shakespeare go,” says Jones. “[But] we have to protect the fundamental mission of the university.”
That means UCSC can no longer serve as SSC’s safety net, and the company has to secure enough money—before a single ticket is sold—to guarantee it will not be a burden on the already straining university coffers. As if that weren’t hard enough, UCSC has to make its final budget decisions in early January, giving the company a scant week to come up with the money. Cato and the rest of the company’s fulltime staff have been sounding the alarm.
“Since we’re part of the university a lot of people assume we have no money worries and the university will always take care of us,” says Cato. “We’re asking the community to step forward and say, ‘Yes, this is important in Santa Cruz.’” The university only contributes about one percent of each year’s $2 million budget, and the rest is made up of donations—which were about $100,000 off what the company had hoped for—and ticket sales, which have also dropped.
Even if SSC does meet its goal, the company has already decided it will cancel the holiday show in 2009, mount just three plays next summer and hire fewer employees overall. - Jessica Lussenhop
