FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Tina.slak@pashakespeare.org
February , 2020
Center Valley, PA—
Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, the professional theatre at DeSales University, this week reached its one-millionth patron served when the historic ticket was sold to a subscriber. PSF will celebrate this milestone in its upcoming 29th summer season. The Festival produces Shakespeare, musical theatre, other classics, and children’s theatre. Since its inception in 1992, PSF has offered 175 total productions (74 Shakespeare), and entertained patrons from 50 states, now averaging 34,000-40,000 in attendance each summer season, plus another 13,000 students each year through its educational WillPower Tour.
The Festival’s one-millionth patron will be identified and recognized on June 12, prior to the opening night performance of A Chorus Line. Following the performance the audience will celebrate the momentous occasion with a champagne toast and the lucky “one millionth” will be treated to a PSF prize package, including a full subscription to the 30th Anniversary season in 2021.
“The word ‘million’ appears fourteen times in Shakespeare’s works. We are honored to use it this once in celebration of a landmark moment for the Festival,” says PSF’s Producing Artistic Director, Patrick Mulcahy. “Our mission is to reach the widest possible audience. We’ve anticipated this event for several years and to all those who have helped us get here, including our founder Father Jerry Schubert and our one-millionth patron, we say ‘thy love is worth a million.’”
Since assuming leadership in 2003, Mulcahy has led PSF’s surge in artistic excellence, annual attendance, and national recognition. In recent years, PSF was recognized by The New York Times as one of 15 “Top Festivals” for summer theatre in the nation and by Playbill.com as one of the “Must Know Regional Theatres” in the nation.
The Festival’s 29th summer season begins with A Chorus Line on the Main Stage, with previews on June 10 and June 11, and opening night on June 12. The official opening in the Schubert Theatre begins with August Wilson’s Fences which will preview on June 18 and June 19, and open on June 20. The season will run through August 2, and also includes Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing in repertory with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility; a limited engagement of Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s An Iliad; and concludes with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2.
In addition, the season will feature two one-night-only performances including Anthony Lawton’s adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters; and a concert by Easton native and Broadway actress Dee Roscioli, who was last seen at PSF as Eva Perón in Evita, and is best known for her record-breaking run as Elphaba in the smash hit Wicked on Broadway.
The children’s theatre will open in the Schubert Theatre on May 29 with Charlotte’s Web, based on the novel by E.B. White; and Shakespeare for Kids will delight families on the Main Stage with a high energy one-hour introduction to A Midsummer Night’s Dream beginning July 22.
The Festival’s 2020 Season Sponsor is The Rider-Pool Foundation. The Associate Season Sponsors are Linda Lapos and Paul Wirth, Douglas Dykhouse, Kathleen Kund Nolan and Timothy Nolan, the Szarko Family, and Harry C. Trexler Trust.
Single tickets, new subscriptions, and package sales for the 2020 summer season can be purchased online at pashakespeare.org, or in person at the box office, or by calling 610.282.WILL [9455].
Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival features acclaimed actors from Broadway, television, and film, and is summer home to over 200 artists from around the country, including winners and nominees of the Tony, Obie, Emmy, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Jefferson, and Barrymore awards.
About Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival
Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy, is the only professional Equity theatre of its scope and scale within a 50-mile radius. PSF is one of only a handful of theatres on the continent producing Shakespeare, musicals, classics, and contemporary plays, all of which can all be seen in rep and in multiple spaces within a few visits in a single summer season. Similarly, PSF was among just a handful of theatres on the continent in recent summers to produce three Shakespeare plays in a single summer season. A patron would have to travel seven to nine hours from PSF to find a comparable range of offerings at a single theatre within a few weeks’ time.
The Festival’s award-winning company of many world-class artists includes Broadway, film, and television veterans, and winners and nominees of the Tony, Emmy, Obie, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Jefferson, Hayes, Lortel, and Barrymore awards. A leading Shakespeare theatre with a national reputation for excellence, PSF has received coverage in The Washington Post, NPR, American Theatre Magazine, Playbill.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and in recent seasons The New York Times has identified PSF as one of the leading summer theatre festivals in the nation. “A world-class theater experience on a par with the top Bard fests,” is how one New York Drama Desk reviewer characterized PSF.
Founded in 1992 and the Official Shakespeare Festival of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, PSF’s mission is to enrich, inspire, engage, and entertain the widest possible audience through first-rate productions of classical and contemporary plays, with a core commitment to Shakespeare and other master dramatists, and through an array of education and mentorship programs. A not-for-profit theatre, PSF receives significant support from its host, DeSales University, from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. With 150 performances of seven productions, the Festival attracts patrons each summer from 30+ states. In 28 years, PSF has offered 175 total productions (74 Shakespeare), and entertained 1,000,000+ patrons from 50 states, now averaging 34,000-40,000 in attendance each summer season, plus another 13,000 students each year through its WillPower Tour. PSF is a multi-year recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts: Shakespeare in American Communities, and is a constituent of Theatre Communications Group, and the Shakespeare Theatre Association. In 2013, leaders of the world’s premier Shakespeare theatres gathered at PSF as the Festival hosted the international STA Conference.
The Festival’s vision is for world-class theatre.
