Stanley Mouse created this psychedelic poster for the 1967 Shakespeare Festival at the University of Santa Clara. The plays included Othello and the Taming of the Shrew. As this festival was primarily an on-campus event, there were not a lot of posters printed - reportedly a limited silkscreen edition of 250 posters.
Founded by Santa Clara University Professor Roger Gross and James Dunn of the College of Marin, the professional California Shakespeare Festival never had the large production budgets of Ashland or San Diego’s Old Globe, but it often outshone those institutions with its “blood and guts” interpretations of the Bard.
Starting in 1963 the “Lifeboat Theatre” became the home of the summer California Shakespeare Festival. It was a vast, supposedly temporary warehouse space that wound up lasting 13 seasons. One benefit of the totally open space was that they could create scenery with no prescribed boundaries.