A September production of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' is full-steam ahead at the California Shakespeare Theater, after an emergency fundraising drive launched in July succeeded in covering a $350,000 budget shortfall.

Cal Shakes, which is celebrating 50 years of performing Shakespeare works and other classics every summer, has been among a number of nonprofit theaters in the Bay Area and beyond that continue to struggle in the post-pandemic era. As Bay Area News Group reports this week, the problems for Cal Shakes actually began before 2020, with audience habits changing, subscriptions dwindling, and the costs to mount productions going up.

After canceling its season in 2020 and doing truncated seasons in 2021 and 2022, Cal Shakes announced it was canceling its 2023 season entirely. A $100,000 gift from Challengers and Euphoria star Zendaya, who got her start taking acting classes at the theater (and her mother worked there for a number of years), came just in time in February, and the theater said it would be put toward facility improvements and the mounting of the previously announced production of As You Like It.

But the theater still faced a $350,000 funding shortfall last month as they prepared to put the show on. And now, Cal Shakes executive director Clive Worsley has announced that the gap was covered by 700 individual donors, in amounts large and small.

"That tells us, there is still very much a desire and support [in the community] for our work to continue. We just have to find a way to make it sustainable," the theatersaid in a statement.

"Because of you, rehearsals will begin, scenes will be blocked, lights will be hung, costumes will be fitted, the set will be moved into place," they said. "Our resident raccoons, coyotes, hawks and bats will see more activity backstage."

Worsley tells Bay Area of the production, "It’s amazing. The cast is stellar, the design team, etc., is amazing. It’s going to be a gorgeous, gorgeous show for our 50th anniversary production."

Cal Shakes began as the Emeryville Shakespeare Company and then as the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, which staged performaces starting in 1971 in Berkeley's John Hinkel Park. Starting in 1975, it became known as the California Shakespeare Festival, and later the California Shakespeare Theater. It moved to its permanent outdoor amphitheater, the Bruns in Orinda, in 1991.

Cal Shakes seasons from the 1990s until the late 2010s typically consisted of four productions, bookended by Shakespeare but with selections from George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and others in between. Under the artistic direction of Jonathan Moscone, son of late SF Mayor George Moscone, the theater featured a number of acclaimed artists in the 2000s.

Previews for As You Like It begin on September 12, and the opening night gala will be held on Saturday, September 14. The show runs through September 29. Find tickets here.

Previously: Zendaya Gives $100K to Struggling Cal Shakes