They don’t usually take lead roles, but these two actors are key to the success of one of the Bay Area’s most acclaimed Shakespeare companies

What can you say about a company of Shakespearean actors whose “Hamlet” can make you laugh, and whose “As You Like It” can make you cry?

You can say that in a tumultuous world of theater where middle-of-the-road is the safest way to keep the lights on, Santa Cruz Shakespeare has instead leaned into a deep bench of iconoclastic players who continue to put a unique stamp on the Bard’s treasure trove of characters.

It’s a different approach to crowd-pleasing—and it’s working, with last season drawing record audiences from around the Bay Area, and this season’s rotation of “As You Like It,” “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Hamlet” outpacing even that. After the last of those plays closes on Sept. 7, the company has even added a fourth production, Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” which will extend its season to the end of September for the first time since the company parted ways with UC Santa Cruz and changed its name from Shakespeare Santa Cruz a decade ago.

Marquee names like Paul Whitworth, Mike Ryan and Charles Pasternak are arguably the top stars of Santa Cruz theater, and have earned reputations nationally for their SCS work. When they play a headlining role—such as Whitworth returning to the stage last summer to play King Lear, Ryan set to play Scrooge in SCS’ winter production of “A Christmas Carol” in November and December, or Pasternak in the role of the title prince in this summer’s “Hamlet,” it’s a big deal.

But the current productions of “As You Like It” and “Hamlet” also showcase two actors who don’t tend to take the lead roles. They’re the SCS equivalent of the character actors who make film audiences go “Oh, it’s that guy! I love that guy!” when they show up on screen. And they’re the two secret weapons of what is possibly SCS’ best season yet.

One, Patty Gallagher, has built a large following over the years with all kinds of roles, but her specialty is Shakespeare’s fools. She might, in fact, be the Bay Area’s foremost authority on fooling—thanks to not only to her acting, but her role as a professor of theater arts at UC Santa Cruz.

“I’m so obsessed with them,” she says about Shakespeare’s clowns and fools. “I sort of think of them like Pokemon Go, like I want to catch them all. I want to play them all!”

This season, her portrayal of Touchstone, the fool in “As You Like It,” is bringing the house down nightly. There is something about Gallagher crashing onto the stage in a wheelbarrow, roaring through a whirlwind romance with Jomar Tagatac’s Audrey, that has to be seen to be believed.

Gallagher appreciates the freedom that the role gives her because, despite what many people may think, fooling and clowning isn’t about being wacky for wacky’s sake. It’s about being able to conjure up the right emotion for the right scene—and good lord, does Shakespeare have a lot of sad clowns. So a truly joyous fool like Touchstone is one that can be appreciated by both audience and actor. The chance to be outrageous can be a blast, but “only if it fits a particular clown in a particular moment,” says Gallagher. “It’s urgent for me, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but it’s urgent for me to use restraint in clowning.”

That same balance of comedy and melancholy is what makes this production of “As You Like It” a triumph. And holding down the melancholy end is Paige Lindsey White as Jaques, a character best known for delivering the “all the world’s a stage” speech.

With her performance, White proves why she is SCS’ other touchstone for this season—not yet as known to the company’s audiences, and perhaps more chameleon-like in her performances, but every bit as profound. Especially at the end of the play, when the other characters have found love and happiness, and Jaques rejects their celebration, and perhaps the very possibility of his own happiness, with his “I am for other than dancing measures” speech, White’s performance can elicit tears—at the climax of one of Shakespeare’s funniest comedies.

Gallagher marvels at what White brings to the role.

“Paige is going to get shy about this, but a lot of people have talked about how affecting her version of Jaques is. I mean, even Charles (Pasternak) posted something like, ‘I just wasn’t expecting to be so moved by Jaques.’ I think Paige has the capacity to take us to really interesting places. And a lot of what you’re responding to is Paige’s ability to find a balance between comedy and a deep plum line of truth. And that is sort of an anchor throughout the play.”

Indeed, White doesn’t take compliments easily, but she has plenty of them for Gallagher. It’s fitting that watching Touchstone is the only thing that seems to bring Jaques joy in the play, because watching Gallagher brings White that exact feeling.

“I mean, I just look at Patty’s performance,” says White. “It’s so full of life and joy and the ability to make sophisticated jokes out of just the most base things. That character is always finding the more, the detail, the antithesis, and they’re fascinated by it because it’s what Jaques hasn’t been able to do before.”

By the way, Gallagher doesn’t take compliments well, either. It’s become a bit of a running gag between the two of them.

“We are each our own worst critic, and each other’s biggest fans,” says Gallagher. “So we sit next to each other in the dressing room, and this hilarious thing happens every time where Paige will come off the stage and I’ll say, ‘You’re having a great night,’ and Paige will be like, ‘Here’s some things that didn’t go right.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, you’re wrong! Listen, they’re loving you!” And she’s like, ‘No, they’re loving you!’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m terrible.’  And although it’s a bit of a comedy routine, one of the things that’s a real pleasure is to know that I’m sitting next to somebody who really is in it, who really wants to make it important every time, who really wants to have every audience have the best show.”

Pasternak, who took over as SCS’ artistic director last year, is loving both of them. “Oh my god, neither of them will give themselves the credit of their achievements,” he says. “It’s ridiculous. They’re both fabulous. But maybe part of what makes them fabulous is that they’re hard on themselves.”

He credits “As You Like It” director Carey Perloff with giving her actors room to shape their performances.

“Carey trusted the play,” says Pasternak. “You look at something like Paige’s beautiful Jaques, and that’s born of a lot of time, a lot of intention—and not trying to fit a sort of square peg into a round hole. She has all the space to explore it. And Patty, who is just, you know, a genius clown. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Touchstone more clear. She brings all of her wonderful training to it, all of her wonderful expertise. It’s a very funny performance, but it’s not lost in gags. It’s very rooted in the text.”

In an interesting bit of mirroring, White plays the blowhard Polonius, father of Hamlet’s girlfriend Ophelia, in this summer’s “Hamlet.” Gallagher was the first actor in the company to play a female Polonius.

White calls it “big shoes to fill, because all I hear is that she was hilarious.” But White is herself incredibly funny in the role, playing the character as a sort of mindless government crony, whipping her body in all directions as Polonius emphasizes ridiculous talking points. She plays against Pasternak as Hamlet, and both are brilliant in their physical performances—they never stop weaving and bobbing, and Pasternak in particular reads almost like a boxer. It’s a striking way to get across the off-kilter quality of these characters, and adds to the audience’s shock when comedy spins into tragedy.

Pasternak thinks White’s Polonius might be even more of a revelation than her Jaques.

“If our audiences didn’t already know Paige,” he says, “they will after ‘Hamlet.’”

What is perhaps most important to Pasternak is the way Gallagher and White work as part of the company; he feels too many theater groups have abandoned the idea of a regional company, and he wants SCS to become an even tighter group of artists who audiences recognize and want to see each season.

“It’s true for Patty and Paige both, even though they’re different artists and they absolutely play differently on stage: they both have just wide open hearts. They are incredibly open in the rehearsal process. They’re also incredibly creative. They bring their expertise to the room, but they shape what they do around the directors. In the theater, great artists have to be great collaborators. Patty and Paige are both magnificent collaborators.”

Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production of “As You Like It” runs through Sept. 1. “Hamlet” runs through Aug. 31. “The Importance of Being Earnest” runs through Sept. 7. All performances are at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road in Santa Cruz. Tickets are at santacruzshakespeare.org.