WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE Tour Adds New Stops to Schedule

The creators of Welcome to Night Vale, one of the world's most downloaded podcasts, extend their acclaimed live show to twelve additional U.S. cities beginning July 7 Like the podcast, the stage version of Night Vale tells stories from the strange desert town of Night Vale, delivering rich, nuanced drama in the form of a community radio show hosted by Cecil Palmer (played by Cecil Baldwin).

With guest stars and live musical score by Disparition, as well as featured musical guests Danny Schmidt and Carrie Elkin (through April), and Erin McKeown (through July), The Welcome to Night Vale stage show appeals to uninitiated audiences as well as to dedicated fans of the podcast, who hang on Cecil's every word. There is a unique script that works equally well as a standalone show and as a complement to the constantly evolving narrative of the podcast. The upcoming tour will be a performance of their new script Ghost Stories-the fifth live script since Welcome to Night Vale first hit the road in 2013.

Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor created the Welcome to Night Vale podcast in 2012, having met through the anarchic, award-winning New York-based theater group the New York Neo-Futurists. The show quickly became an underground success; in July 2013 it was downloaded 2.5 million times, making it No. 1 on iTunes, ahead of popular programs such as This American Life and Radiolab. That August, it was downloaded 8.5 million times.

Instead of selling advertisements to fund the podcast, the Night Vale team decided to draw on their backgrounds in the performing arts to launch a touring live show, which has attracted capacity crowds to increasingly large venues in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Harper Perennial published the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, by Fink and Cranor, which debuted at #4 on The New York Times Fiction Bestseller list"