Shakespeare in Pershing Square

Shakespeare Festival/LA is a free summertime tradition at downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square, but the square isn’t always an ideal venue.

It’s atop a parking garage, and the top layer of soil and grass is shallow, says producing artistic director Ben Donenberg. Beneath it are fragile electrical and water conduits.

“Last year, we purchased half a dozen garden stakes that we intended to use to mark off three sections of the grass: one for blankets, one for low chairs and one for regular folding chairs,” Donenberg says. “We pounded the first stake into the lawn and punctured an entire irrigation line that cost us $1,600 to replace.”

Also last year, the festival paid a landscape architect $2,000 to design a system of fabric banners that would enclose the audience and help focus the view of the stage. But there wasn’t enough depth to anchor the banners without breaking through the roof of the garage.

“In Pershing, it’s about geographic and interpretive accessibility and about community building, maybe even more than art,” Donenberg says. The company’s secondary home, at South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes, is “much more supportive of the artistic choices we make.” Admission in Palos Verdes also comes with a fee: $15 or $18.

For this year’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” at Pershing from Wednesday through July 26 and in Palos Verdes July 31-Aug. 10, Donenberg built a proscenium he hopes will provide focus and fit the ‘50s sitcom concept.

-- Don Shirley