Light, hope, community—and a few surprises. That’s what Marin Shakespeare Company is promising attendees at its upcoming gala fundraiser, “The Light We See,” enthusiastically brightening the holiday season on Sunday evening, Dec. 7.
The year-ending benefit event takes its appropriately chosen title from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, in which Portia notes how far a little candle can throw its beams, adding, “So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
With this lyrical reminder of how far-reaching the shared light of creativity and art can be, Marin Shakespeare Company has planned an event its organizers say will do much more than just raise money for the organization’s numerous award-winning programs.
As described on MTC’s website, “The Light We See” will stand as a celebration of the enduring radiance of live theater as a positivity-spreading artform, illuminating that message through live performances on the theater’s stage, music before and after, and a grand announcement of the shows and live events that will make up the company’s 2026 season.
“In a time when the world feels heavy with challenge, we choose to gather in light,” it states, “to celebrate what we’re fighting for—creativity, community and hope.”
Beginning with a casual 5:30pm gathering in the atrium space of the nonprofit’s Fourth Street theater, where attendees will be served wines from Frey Vineyards and “gourmet small plates,” Marin Shakespeare Company’s board, staff, artists and community partners will be present to meet and connect with local supporters and other Bay Area theater makers.
The main event, at 6:15pm, is a program designed to reflect MSC’s mission of “engaging hearts and minds, amplifying diverse voices, and creating theatre that matters.” The program, according to the event’s description, will include “special guests, unexpected moments, and a few surprises,” culminating in the big reveal of the company’s 2026 line-up, an assortment of shows artist director Jon Tracy describes as the company’s most ambitious season yet.
Finally, after a formal opportunity to pledge financial support, there will be an afterparty with live music, dancing and additional community connection and theatrical hobnobbing.
Marin Shakespeare Company has just ended its 2025 season, a critically-praised run that featured two spectacular outdoor productions, beginning with Bridgette Loriaux’s mind-bending reinvention of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and closing with M. Graham Smith’s magnificently epic delivery of The Tempest.
In between, in collaboration with Play On Shakespeare, the company presented a three-week theater festival at its indoor theater, in a program titled Seeds of Time. Six teams of theater artists presented their own interpretation of theatrical classics. It’s going to be hard to beat that lineup of sheer entertainment and theatrical scope, but clearly, MTC is about to try.
While 2025 was a verifiable success artistically, it was a tough year financially, as Marin Shakespeare Company faced some devastating news in May, when it learned that the National Endowment for the Arts had canceled two significant grants the company had already been awarded. One of those grants, worth $20,000, was intended to commission a brand new fairy-tale musical from Lauren Gunderson, adapted from Rebecca Solnit’s children’s book, Cinderella Liberator.
The second $20,000 grant would have funded the company’s Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe, which for several years now has been working with formerly incarcerated artists to create theatrical productions as a form of drama therapy.
MSC has said it still plans to continue those projects, one way or another.
‘The Light We See’ begins at 5:30pm, Sunday, Dec. 7. Marin Shakespeare Company’s indoor theater is at 514 Fourth St., San Rafael. General admission is $105.99, and $315.99 for a VIP table for two, available on the MSC ticket page at MarinShakespeare.org.
