Earlier this month, theater lovers in the Bay Area got some very bad news. California Shakespeare Theater, the beloved nonprofit company that has operated there for 50 years, announced that it would soon close in the face of an insurmountable financial impasse.
It sometimes seems the American theater's relationship to the Bard might be fraying. In my travels this summer, from coast to coast, for instance, I saw Shakespeare theaters producing less Shakespeare.
How real is this Shakespeare shrinkage? American Theatre magazine, which collects data from more than 500 theaters, publishes a list of the most performed plays each season.
Over the past five years, Shakespeare's presence on American stages has fallen a staggering 58 percent. At many formerly Shakespeare-only theaters, the production of the Bard's plays has dropped to as low as less than 20 percent of the repertory.
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