.Opinion: Thinking Seriously About Silliness

Every summer when I interview the creative minds behind Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the conversations go to places I never expect. For instance, this year I started with some vague notion that I should find out about how Kathryn Chetkovich’s The Formula became the first work by a local playwright to be produced by the company, and ended up getting into questions like, “Are Shakespeare’s fools really fools?,” “What makes clowns funny?” and even “What is the nature of comedy?”

The best part, for me, is that everyone from Artistic Director Mike Ryan to this year’s SCS directors Ellen Maguire, Miriam Laube and Paul Mullins to actors like Patty Gallagher, Lorenzo Roberts and Dion Graham—and I’d be remiss not to mention Chetkovich herself—are all willing to go there. It’s hard to explain, but for some reason interviews with members of this company are never typical. I think you’ll understand when you read how thoughtful and insightful their answers are in my cover story this week. None of them had any practical need to go beyond, “Yeah, we’re doing The Formula and The Tempest and Twelfth Night this year, July 10-Aug. 28, everybody should check it out!” But these people love thinking and talking about their work, and about the larger questions it ties into. To me, that absolutely shows not only in my story, but also in what they put on the stage every summer.

STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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