At a time when many Bay Area theaters areimploring audiences to return,launchingemergency fundraising campaigns,shrinking their offeringsorclosing altogether,Santa Cruz Shakespeare is thriving, even growing.

The company hit 114% of its box-office goal for the year before its summer season even finished. And its 2024 lineup, announced Monday, Aug. 21, expands to five plays from the customary three, extending its summer calendar into September and then also mounting a winter holiday show for the first time in more than a decade.

Incoming Artistic Director Charles Pasternak, who joined the staff in January, and predecessor Mike Ryan, whose tenure concludes at the end of August, had many theories about their company’s success. One is simply that they work outdoors on beautiful, eucalyptus-lined grounds equipped with picnic tables, giving every night at SCS a sense of occasion and adventure. But other theories derive from how differently their company operates from others of their size.

An actor as the face

Santa Cruz Shakespearewas born 10 years ago from the remains ofShakespeare Santa Cruz,which closed when its partner, UC Santa Cruz, announced it could no longer support the theater. Both SCS and its predecessor have a proud tradition of actors running the company, in contrast to the vast majority of local theaters, where the leader is a director. Ryan compares his advantage to the way the frontman of a band becomes a figurehead for the group as a whole.

“Anyone who wants to donate or attend the theater who sees the quality of the work of the actor has a tangible experience of the artistic quality that that person espouses,” he said, noting that with directors, the connection just isn’t as immediate or visceral. It also matters to the rest of a summer’s actors to have a peer in charge, who is “in the trenches with them,” said Pasternak.

“It breaks down the traditional hierarchy of power that you experience artistically, when an actor in the company actually has the voice to outweigh a director,” Ryan added. “It just gives everyone a little more permission to talk candidly.”

演员们的聚集地

Even if an individual play at Santa Cruz Shakespeare is lackluster, it’s never the fault of the actors. The company consistently attracts superlative performers who make exquisite, thoughtful little choices that give text a spring in its step.

One draw, said Ryan, is the locale: “I know people who have come to us because they like surfing.”

Another is the length of a contract. Because the company works in repertory, casting an individual actor in multiple shows that play in nightly rotation, performers at Santa Cruz Shakespeare get 12 weeks of work at once; at many Bay Area theaters, show contracts guarantee far fewer.

About that rotating rep

The model of seeing an actor play one role one night and a contrasting one the next isn’t just a thrill for audiences, it’s also efficient.

Most theaters hire, rehearse, build sets, open and close, get rid of everybody, then start all over again, Pasternak pointed out, noting, “That model is not cost-effective.” His company saves by having just one versatile set design and group of actors for all three shows.

The actors who return each summer, such as the consistently excellent Patty Gallagher, create what Pasternak calls a “home-team feel.” For Ryan, “It gives the community something to root for.”

One of the only local companies to surpass Santa Cruz Shakespeare in terms of an actors’ home team was American Conservatory Theater, which offered year-round, full-time salaries to a core acting company. But ACT disbanded that group more than a decade ago. One reason, according to then-Artistic Director Carey Perloff, was that she didn’t want actors to pass up higher-paying gigs elsewhere; another is that if you’re going to tell a wide array of culturally specific stories, no single small group of actors can have the mix you need for long.

Clarity of mission

“我们都是祝福和咒诅narrow mission statement, which is our focus on Shakespeare,” Ryan said. The disadvantage of that is being dominated by one dead straight white guy; the advantage is clarity. Audiences and donors know exactly what they’re seeing and supporting.

“There’s a level of trust and a level of ownership and a level of expectation met between us and our stakeholders,” Ryan explained.

At many other theaters, seasons can feel like little more than the grab bag of whatever scripts a leader happened to get the rights to produce.

“There’s a pitfall in trying to please as many different factions of the theater world as possible,” Ryan said. “There’s a sort of diffusion that happens, and that may please some of the people some of the time, but makes it difficult for the core of your community to appreciate you all of the time.”

Unveiling 2024

Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s success this summer made 2024 seem like the right time to take the calculated risk of expanding. Next season begins in July with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and “As You Like It,” as well as Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” The show extending the calendar into September is Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” It’ll mark the first time the company has produced either Wilde or Williams.

The season continues with a holiday show, “A Christmas Carol,” that takes place indoors in December at the city’s downtown Veterans Memorial Building.

Ryan stars as Scrooge in “Carol,” and in “Hamlet” Ryan and Pasternak play Claudius and the title character — an apt embodiment of the season’s theme of generations.

“All of these plays deal very, very directly with how the younger generation inherits the world from the older generation,” Pasternak said. “Sometimes it’s through escaping to the woods to redefine yourself and find love and unity and then returning to the world, as in ‘As You Like It.’ ” And sometimes, it’s through leaving — as when Tom escapes his struggling family in “Menagerie.”

“The heartbreak of ‘Menagerie’ for me is that I believe Tom wants to stay,” Pasternak explained. “It’s easy to say that he goes at the end, and that’s what he’s wanted to do the whole time. But the whole play he’s fighting to stay. He doesn’t want to leave, but he has to.”

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com