Shakespeare by the Sea will bring the Bard’s timeless tales to Los Angeles and Orange counties once again this summer, with the traveling theater troupe set to begin its 26th season this week.
The troupe will open its seasonal run on Thursday, June 22, with the comedy “Twelfth Night” at Point Fermin Park in San Pedro. A week later, it will stage the tragedy of “Hamlet” at the same park.
Throughout the summer, Shakespeare by the Sea will visit venues throughout LA and Orange counties, including Aliso Viejo, Beverly Hills, Cerritos, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rossmoor, Santa Ana, South Pasadena and Torrance.
Longtime collaborators and co-producers Suzanne Dean and Stephanie Coltrin have taken over as co-artistic directors of the admission-free theater company, which Lisa Coffi founded in 1998. Coffi retired after SBTS’s 2022 season, but her legacy has survived.
“I really give big credit to Lisa for for creating something that lives past her tenure,” Coltrin said. “A lot of people would just say, you know, I’m done. But she specifically wanted to create something that would go on.”
Coltrin will direct “Hamlet” and this time, she said, it’s personal.
When she first directed “Hamlet” in 2014, Coltrin said, she focused on the madness surrounding the titular Danish prince.
Shakespeare’s well-known tragedy tells the story of a brooding Hamlet, whose father’s ghost seeks revenge for his murder. Hamlet attempts to take action on what he knows is the truth — that his uncle Claudius murdered his father and married his mother. But Hamlet is infamously indecisive.
Coltrin reread the classic play when her father was dying last year and found a different meaning, she said. This time, she saw it more as a production about the grief of a child losing a parent.
“Shakespeare wrote it right after his son died, when he was actually writing ‘Twelfth Night’ around the same time,” Coltrin said….
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