For Immediate Release: September 26, 2005
Media Contact: Lisa Higgins, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, 610.282.WILL x4

The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival at DeSales University announces a 2006 summer season of plays that examine the nature of identity, of self-knowledge, and of the roles we play en route to discovery, fulfillment, or ruin. In each of PSF's productions, characters don disguises in search of themselves and their destinies.

PSF's 15th Anniversary Season features two Shakespearean works last performed at PSF a decade ago. Opening on the Festival Stage, As You Like It is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, with the love affairs and rivalries of royalty recast in the famed forest of Arden, where the exiles make peace with the past and discover themselves anew. Subtlety and sophistication blend beautifully with clowning, hunting, and wrestling, June 21 to July 9.

In his masterpiece of revenge, Othello, Shakespeare unflinchingly contrasts the malicious villain Iago with the honest and principled hero of the play's title, and in the process furnishes some of the most electrifying and exquisite speeches in the canon. Manipulating language as a weapon for intimate destruction, Iago abuses Othello's trust and sows the insidious seeds for the tragic hero's fall. Othello will be performed in the Arena Stage, July 12 to August 6.

"Each season, we strive to illuminate the range of Shakespeare's genius. The distance between the forest of Arden and the mind of Iago is so great as to inspire a sense of awe that these plays have in common two features: they were both written by the same man and they still reveal our present natures," says Patrick Mulcahy, PSF's producing Artistic Director.

The season also features Sleuth, a Tony Award winning mystery thriller (which later generated a film starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine). A young man arrives at the impressive home of a famous mystery writer, only to be drawn into a tangled web of intrigue and gamesmanship. PSF's intimate Arena Stage provides the battleground, up-close, from June 14 to July 2.

My Fair Lady, the 'loverly' classic musical, will grace the Festival Stage from July 19 to August 6. "A natural expression of our classic mission," says Mulcahy, "We have Shaw to thank for that." The production will be directed by PSF Associate Artistic Director Dennis Razze, who directed PSF's critically-acclaimed first musical, Man of La Mancha, in 2004.

Season tickets will be available for sale to members only for a limited time beginning in November. Previous subscribers will have an opportunity to renew their tickets beginning in December. Subscriptions will be available to the general public after January 1st.

The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival at DeSales University is the Official Shakespeare Festival of the Commonwealth and a professional, not-for-profit theatre company. An independent 501 c 3 organization, PSF receives support from DeSales University and relies on contributions from individuals, government agencies, corporations and foundations. PSF is a constituent of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre, and is a member of both the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia and the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America.

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