Amid the hurry and flurry of the holiday season just past, Bay Area media outlets were busy crowning the year’s best creative achievements. We’re proud to say that our productions made most critics’ top-ten lists for 2011.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, critic Robert Hurwitt named Jonathan Moscone‘s production of Candida, by George Bernard Shaw, among the year’s ten best, calling it “buoyantly nuanced, exquisitely designed, and unexpectedly suspenseful.” Hurwitt also gave this year’s Bay Area acting MVP nod to Rod Gnapp, who played Baptista in our The Taming of the Shrew this season. On his theater blog The Idiolect, independent critic Sam Hurwitt, a.k.a. Hurwitt the Younger, included Amanda Dehnert‘s brand-new play, The Verona Project, as one of his favorite 2011 productions, “entirely new and electric, with a touch of magical realism, witty dialogue, fiendishly clever storytelling devices, and some awfully catchy pop-rock songs”; one of his two MVPs was Verona‘s Julia, actress Arwen Anderson. Critic Chad Jones gave Shana Cooper‘s production of The Taming of the Shrew a prominent place on his Theater Dogs top ten, admitting that it was a tough call between that and our Candida but ultimately falling for how “leads Erica Sullivan and Slate Holmgren brought not only humor to this thorny comedy but also a depth of emotion I hadn’t ever experienced with this play.” And Cooper’s Shrew “packed a punch” according to KCBS‘ list of the Bay Area’s best arts and culture in 2011.

Accolades must also be given to Cal Shakes Artistic Director Moscone, whose production of Clybourne Park at A.C.T. made it onto every single list mentioned above!

Read the Chronicle‘s Top Ten list here.

Read The Idiolect‘s Top Ten list here.

Read the Theater Dogs Top Ten here.

Read KCBS’ Best Ofs here.

Stacy Ross

We are pleased to welcome the inimitable Stacy Ross to the ranks of our Associate Artist company. Ross, who made her Cal Shakes debut performing in all four shows of our 1992 season (as Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, First Witch in Macbeth, Juno in The Tempest, and Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona), has been seen most recently on our stage as a series of brassy (and often bloodthirsty) babes in Titus Andronicus (2011), Mrs. Warren’s Profession (2010), Macbeth (2010), and An Ideal Husband (2008).

Hearty congrats also go to playwright Octavio Solis (John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven), who this month was awarded a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship. The USA Fellows—50 in all—each receive $50,000 toward project development and related expenses. Up next for Solis is his final South Coast Repertory workshop for Cloudlands, a musical collaboration with Adam Gwon, directed by Amanda Dehnert (The Verona Project); performances begin May 1. Solis is also working on commissions for the Magic Theatre and for Yale Rep.

L. Peter Callender and Joan Mankin are currently wowing audiences in The Soldier’s Tale at Aurora Theatre; if you’d like to catch it, you need to hurry, as it closes December 18. Callender goes straight into rehearsals for Frankie and Johnnie in the Clair de Lune (Jan 20–Feb 5) at Diablo Actors Ensemble, followed in the Spring by Xtigone (April 20–May 13) at African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, where he is also Artistic Director. In February, Mankin will perform at the Ashby Stage in an original piece by Joan Holden called Counter-Attack, based on the interviews with diner waitresses found in the book Counter Culture.

Nancy Carlin’s production of Trevor Allen’s Working for the Mouse ends at EXIT Theatre Dec 17. Next she’ll direct Arms and the Man at Center Rep (Jan 27–Feb 25). James Carpenter is playing Scrooge in American Conservatory Theater’s  A Christmas Carol—for the sixth year in a row—through December 24, once again under the direction of fellow Associate Artist Domenique Lozano.

Susannah Schulman and Danny Scheie in the Berkeley Rep production of YOU, NERO; photo by Kevin Berne.

Speaking of A.C.T., Janet Foster has joined their Artistic Associate Company, as well, and is their new Casting Director, to boot. She’s currently casting Scorched, the West Coast premiere of Maple & Vine, and the award-winning Higher.

Dan Hiatt will be playing Jacob Marley and many others in a very musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol adapted and directed by Rick Lombardo and running through Christmas Eve at San Jose Rep.  Jan 17–Feb 12 he’ll play Harry Wilson in The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) at TheatreWorks, directed by Leslie Martinson and also featuring James Carpenter and Cal Shakes regular Nicholas Pelczar.

Danny Scheie and Susannah Schulman are performing together in Amy Freed’s You, Nero at Arena Stage through January 1, reprising the roles they originated at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2009.  And upcoming projects for lighting designer Scott Zielinski in 2012 are Cat On A Hot Tin Roof for the Guthrie Theater, Good Goods at Yale Repertory Theater, An Iliad at New York Theater Workshop, Miss Fortune at Royal Opera House (London) and Abigail’s Party for the National Theater of Norway (Oslo).

A loyal Cal Shakes supporter recently came to us with a challenge: She told us that if we can attract 250 new donors this season, she will donate an additional $10,000 to Cal Shakes!

California Shakespeare Theater will follow up its season opener Titus Andronicus with The Verona Project, a brand-new hybrid of play and concert, inspired in part by Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The world-premiere production, which is written, composed, and directed by nationally-acclaimed director Amanda Dehnert in her Cal Shakes debut, plays at the Bruns Amphitheater, July 6 through July 31.

The Verona Project isn’t just a play. It’s also a band—composed of eight actors playing three times as many instruments, performing a hybrid of theater and rock concert that marries Shakespeare to fairytales to real life, infusing it all with enough joyful exuberance to rock the Bruns Amphitheater to the imaginary rafters.

The story revolves around childhood best friends Proteus and Valentine; Julia, the girl who comes between them; the princely Silvio who complicates everyone’s story; and the truth-seeking, identity-finding, fairytale-twisting path that brings them all together again—not that much older but a whole lot wiser.

“I really love the characters Shakespeare created,” says Dehnert, “and they have inspired me to dive deeper into the various natures of love, loss, and self-discovery. I believe that to love and to lose are inextricably tied together; loving something or someone is perhaps the riskiest and most rewarding thing we can do in the course of our lives, and it’s what can cause us the most pain. The characters in Verona are struggling with the experience of first love, which I think is something we can all connect to. They are also trying to figure out who they are as individuals, and who they want to grow up to become.”

The actor/musician cast members of The Verona Project are all making their Cal Shakes debuts with this production: Arwen Anderson (Love in American Times at San Jose Rep, Tales of the City workshop at A.C.T.) as Julia; Dan Clegg (Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at A.C.T., numerous productions in Montreal including The Rocky Horror Show and Equus) as Proteus; Marisa Duchowny (Tales of the City workshop at A.C.T., Chicago with Prima del Teatro in San Miniato, Italy) as Sylvio’s Mother; Phil Mills (featured principal vocalist at San Francisco Symphony’s A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein; numerous productions for A.C.T.’s MFA program including Macbeth and Hamlet) as Sylvio; Harold Pierce (The Seagull at Marin Theatre Company, plus roles at TheatreFIRST, Impact Theatre, and Shotgun) as Speed; Nate Trinrud (Peter Pan: a Play at Lookingglass, Fly By Night at TheatreWorks) as Valentine, Elena Wright (The Salt Plays: Part I and Part II at Shotgun, Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Sonoma Rep) as Thuria, and Adam Yazbeck (The Kite Runner, The Glass Menagerie at San Jose Rep; The Lion in Winter at Shakespeare Santa Cruz) as the Duke.

The design team includes: Daniel Ostling (set design) who designed last season’s Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing, and who received a Tony nomination for Best Scenic Design for Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses; Melissa Torchia (costume design), making her Cal Shakes debut, having recently completed her Masters in Costume Design from Northwestern University, and who has designed for Lookingglass and Steppenwolf in Chicago; David Cuthbert (lighting design), whose credits include lighting and media designs for San Jose Rep, the Magic, the Old Globe and Arena Stage; and Josh Horvath (music production and sound design), an Artistic Associate at Lookingglass, who has created soundscapes at the Kennedy Center, Long Wharf, Chicago Shakespeare, and Lincoln Center, to name a few. Others on the artistic staff of the production are Associate Artist Domenique Lozano (vocal/text coach); Dave Maier (fight director), Megan Q. Sada (stage manager), and Laxmi Kumaran (assistant stage manager).

Amanda Dehnert is a director, composer, and adapter. Her recent projects include: Julius Caesar and All’s Well That Ends Well (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Peter Pan (A Play) (Lookingglass Theatre Company), which she wrote and directed; Death of a Salesman (Dallas Theatre Center); The Fantasticks (Long Wharf and Arena Stage); and Cabaret (Stratford Shakespeare Festival). She currently serves as an Associate Professor in the theater department at Northwestern University. Prior to that, she taught for the Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA program. Ms Dehnert has held various positions with Trinity Rep, culminating with her serving as the Acting Artistic Director for the 2005-2006 season. Productions for Trinity Rep include Cyrano de Bergerac, Henry IV, West Side Story, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Annie, The Skin of Our Teeth, Noises Off, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, My Fair Lady, Othello, Saint Joan, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, and A Christmas Carol. As a composer, she has written scores and songs for much of her own work as well as for The Imaginary Invalid, The Cider House Rules, As You Like It, and a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol, co-authored with Oskar Eustis, which premiered in Boston in 2003.

Single tickets for The Verona Project range from $35-$66, with discounts available for seniors, students, persons age 30 and under, and groups. Prices, dates, and artists subject to change. For information or to charge tickets by phone with VISA, MasterCard or American Express, call the Cal Shakes Box Office at 510.548.9666. Additional information and online ticketing are available at www.calshakes.org.