In the 400 years the English-speaking world has been performing the plays of William Shakespeare, what’s happening this summer in Santa Cruz may very well be a first. Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s second season is underway, and, as designed, the festival may, in fact, be the most “female-forward” (to coin an awkward term) Shakespeare festival in history. SCS artistic director Mike Ryan announced earlier this year that he is instituting a gender-equity policy at his theater company. That means that not only will the number of men and women in the acting company be the same, but that the Shakespearean plays produced this year – “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Macbeth” – will conform to that gender equity.

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