FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tina Slak • 610.282.WILL, ext. 4
tina.slak@pashakespeare.org
July 19, 2018
Dan Domenech returns to Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival for a one night only concert following his highly lauded performance as Che in last summer’s hit Evita.
Bootleg Famous: To Broadway and Beyond will be performed on the Main Stage on Monday, July 30 at 7:30pm at the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of DeSales University. The concert features songs and stories from Domenech’s 16-year career spanning Broadway, world tours, and unintentional internet theatre fame.
“The audiences at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival are incredibly generous and it’ll be great to see some familiar faces working on this year’s show. I’m excited to come back!
“I have chosen some of my favorite songs, from my early days growing up in community theater to what I’m doing now, and fit them into a story. The concert is 90 minutes, with sixteen songs and includes stories about my career,” says Domenech.
Domenech is best known for starring in the role of Drew in the Broadway musical Rock of Ages and for his work on the Off-Broadway cult hit Heathers: the Musical. He’s had guest appearances on Fox television’s Gotham and had a recurring role on the hit television series Glee.
A Long Island native, Domenech was an active member of the Long Island theater community prior to booking his first tour in the Tony Award-winning musical RENT. He then went on to originate roles in the pre-Broadway runs of Wonderland and Sister Act: The Musical and starred in the Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots at the Royal Alexandra theatre in Toronto.
Domenech comes to PSF directly from rehearsals for the Off-Broadway revival of Smokey Joe’s Cafe, where he is one of the standbys in the production. “As a standby, I cover all of the cast in the show and have to be ready to go on for them at any moment, so I’m there for every performance,” says, Domenech.
He has toured with the original band from Broadway’s Rock of Ages, with symphonies across the country, and with Neil Berg’s concert shows 100 Years of Broadway & 50 Years of Rock and Roll. He was recently in Maine for the limited run of Smokey Joe’s Cafe at the Ogunquit Playhouse.
World-class pianist David Gardos will come direct from Broadway to accompany Domenech for the evening. Gardos is a music director, conductor, pianist and educator from Sydney, Australia. His performing career has taken him all around the United States, from Broadway stages to Carnegie Hall, Seattle to Puerto Rico, with artists including Kristin Chenoweth, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kelsey Grammer, Debra Monk, Victor Garber, Carolee Carmello and Matthew Morrison. He was the associate music conductor for Broadway’s Falsettos, Finding Neverland, and Chaplin; and the assistant conductor for Side Show, Big Fish.
Bootleg Famous: To Broadway and Beyond will run for one night only on Monday, July 30 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $38 and can be purchased online at www.pashakespeare.org or by calling the box office at 610.282.WILL [9455].
Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s 27th season also features the stage adaptation of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s highly acclaimed Academy Award-winning screenplay Shakespeare in Love playing in repertory withWilliam Shakespeare’s epic King Richard II. “Extreme Shakespeare” opens in the Schubert Theatre on July 25 with Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy All’s Well That Ends Well.
Now through August 4, children’s programming continues in the Schubert Theatre with Alice in Wonderland and, celebrating its ten-year anniversary, PSF’s Shakespeare for Kids: a one-hour production designed for pre-school and elementary age students to actively experience Shakespeare’s vibrant language and characters. Presented on the Main Stage, July 25 through August 4.
The 2018 Festival Season Sponsors are Keith and Stefanie Wexler. The Associate Season Sponsors are Linda Lapos and Paul Wirth, Kathleen Kund Nolan and Timothy E. Nolan, The Szarko Family, and Harry C. Trexler Trust.
The season will run to August 5 at the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts on the bucolic Center Valley campus of DeSales University.
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 will be among just a handful of theatres on the continent this summer 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, 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 26 years, PSF has offered 161 total productions (69 Shakespeare), and entertained 900,000+ patrons from 50 states, now averaging 38,000+ in attendance each summer season, plus another 15,000 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, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, 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 work.
BIOS:
DAN DOMENECH Broadway: Rock of Ages (Drew); Off-Broadway: Smokey Joe’s Cafe (Standby); Heathers: the Musical (Hipster Dork); Tour/Sitdowns: Rock of Ages (1st National Tour), Rent, Sister Act, Wonderland, Kinky Boots; Other roles include PSF’s Evita (Che), DTC’s Rocky Horror (Frank n Furter), Tuachan’s Aladdin (Aladdin), as well as guest appearances on “Glee” and “Gotham” on FOX.
DAVID GARDOS Broadway: Falsettos, Finding Neverland, Chaplin (Associate Conductor); Side Show, Big Fish (Assistant Conductor). Regional/NY (Music Director): Darling Grenadine (Goodspeed-at-Chester), The Boy Who Danced On Air (Abingdon Theatre), My Paris (Long Wharf Theater; Goodspeed-at-Chester), Ever After (Papermill Playhouse), Nickel Mines (NYMF). Concerts: Deb Monk’s Birthday Bash (BC/EFA), Kristin Chenoweth at Carnegie Hall. Master of Music (Orchestral Conducting), University of Cincinnati (CCM); Bachelor of Music (Music Education), University of Sydney.
PATRICK MULCAHY (Producing Artistic Director, PSF) Since assuming leadership in 2003, Mulcahy has led PSF’s surge in artistic excellence, financial stability, and national recognition. Accomplishments include first-ever grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, attracting a multitude of award-winning artists including winners and nominees of the Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Barrymore, and Emmy awards, a 75% increase in annual attendance, a successful campaign to double the Festival’s endowment, and the expansion of the number of Actors’ Equity contracts per season. He led the strategic planning process that led to PSF’s Vision 2030, a commitment to world-class professional theatre, and coverage in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post. As a professional director, actor, and fight director, credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, television and radio. Mr. Mulcahy has acted with many industry luminaries including Don Cheadle, Angela Bassett, Cynthia Nixon, and Tony Shaloub at the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Roundabout Theatre, Hartford Stage, Great Lakes Theatre Festival, and the Walnut Street Theatre. He served as fight director for A Few Good Men on Broadway, and multiple Off-Broadway productions starring Marcia Gay Harden, John Mahoney, Patrick Dempsey, and John Savage. He directed Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga in The Real Thing, and, for PSF, directed The Winter’s Tale, Henry IV, Part 1, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Also Head of Acting at DeSales, Patrick holds degrees in acting and directing from Syracuse University.
