Santa Cruz Shakespeare the new company changed its name to Santa Cruz Shakespeare. "The New York Times" referred to the company's rebirth as an "underdog success story." For its inaugural season under its new arrangement, Santa Cruz Shakespeare presented "As You Like It", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", and "The Beard of Avon" in July and August 2014. All three shows were performed in the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen on UCSC's campus. For the 2015 season Mike Ryan took over sole Artistic Director duties and the company announced productions of "Much Ado About Nothing", "Macbeth", and David Ives's adaptation of Pierre Corneille's "The Liar".
Much Ado About Nothing (2012 film) frame a little bit, the more it speaks towards what’s going on". The film was shot hand-held, digitally with multiple cameras, often with a RED Epic, and used a Lensbaby Composer with Double Glass lens on a Canon 7D to differentiate certain scenes. Whedon composed the score for the film and recruited Deborah Lurie to produce. He arranged music to "Sigh No More" and "Heavily", two songs that William Shakespeare had written into the play. These tracks were performed by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon. Whedon described the experience of making his debut in scoring a film as "terrifying", going