Spanning the Globe

WHEN THE OLD GLOBE ANNOUNCED in 2004 that it was going to resurrect and expand its annual summer Shakespeare Festival, doing three of the Bard’s plays with a repertory company, skepticism abounded. Doubters said such an undertaking would be prohibitively expensive and wouldn’t appeal to summer audiences, who tend to prefer lighter fare.

Well, they clearly underestimated the idea, the audiences and Darko Tresnjak, the talented director the Globe picked to captain the enterprise. The festival offerings have been uniformly superior, particularly those directed by Tresnjak (last summer’s The Winter’s Tale was named 2005’s outstanding dramatic production by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle). And patrons have responded, helping boost the Globe to its highest subscription level in decades.

Tresnjak chose to direct two of the three productions, and this year he’s going to extremes. He’ll helm what is probably Shakespeare’s most beloved play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (July 5–September 29), and what is commonly considered the bloodiest, Titus Andronicus (July 9–September 30). The third production is Othello (July 7–September 28), directed by Jesse Berger.

Titus has never been performed at the Globe. “We figured it was time,” Tresnjak says. “For this summer’s plays, I picked a PG, a PG-13 and an R.” Titus is always controversial because of its lacerating plot, which involves revenge, rape, mutilation and murder—and then gets more gruesome. He plans to place it in a contemporary setting, a first in his many stagings of Shakespeare, and puns that it is “bloody good fun” because “it gives credence to the feelings we all have about revenge.”

Midsummer, of course, will be more family-friendly. The familiar plot of mixed-up lovers in the earthly and spirit worlds will be reshaped to involve a graduation from high school in ancient Athens. As for Othello, Berger plans to set it in the Jacobean period, “when society was tightly restricted by clothing and rules.“ Yet, he says, its many themes—including love versus betrayal, the outsider wanting in and “a narrowness of purpose to achieve evil”—resonate today.

Also in July, the Globe offers its first production from the oeuvre of the late Pulitzer Prize– and Tony-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein. It’s The Sisters Rosensweig (July 15–August 20), Wasserstein’s comic riff on Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and the trade-offs women have to make in life.

ONE KEY SOURCE OF NOURISHMENT for our city’s robustness in theater is the annual festival of short plays sponsored by the Actors Alliance of San Diego. The two-week showcase of local stage talent is this year offered July 18-30 at the Lyceum Theatre. The group solicits submissions, then chooses the 36 best and presents them in groups of three or four. Most plays get performed twice during the festival, and a panel of judges picks four to six of the works for a Best of the Fest program.

In conjunction with the festival is the alliance’s second One-Page Play Competition. The winner gets a cash prize, and his/her play is performed at the 2007 festival. For a complete listing of dates and programs, call 619-640-3900 or check actorsalliance.com/festival.html.

IT’S NOT EXACTLY THEATER, but it’s live and on a stage. And it’s hugely popular. It’s the Pageant of the Masters, in which famous artworks are depicted in tableaux vivants. The combination of motionless actors in detailed finery and precisely crafted scenery has been drawing sellout crowds since its origin as Living Pictures in 1932. It’s the centerpiece of Laguna Beach’s Festival of the Arts, a summer-long celebration featuring artists, music and entertainment. This year’s pageant, themed “A Passion for Art,” is July 2–September 1 and will include, without a code, Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

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