Great Lakes Theater Festival Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Expanded Season

Charles Fee, Producing Artistic Director of Great Lakes Theater Festival (GLTF), unveiled an expanded season to commemorate the classic theater company's fiftieth anniversary. The new season, which will include an additional sixth production, is scheduled to run from September 2011 through June 2012 at PlayhouseSquare's Hanna and Ohio Theatres. "Since our successful move to the Hanna Theatre in 2008, we began to imagine growing to a six-play season," said GLTF Producing Artistic Director, Charles Fee of the Festival's expanded offerings. "Our fiftieth anniversary is the perfect opportunity to celebrate our history and point toward our future with this exciting development in our company."

GLTF will commence its fiftieth season with the Tony Award-winning musical, Cabaret presented in rotating repertory with Shakespeare's uproarious battle of the sexes, The Taming of the Shrew (September 23 - October 30, 2011). The Festival's annual production of Dickens' holiday classic, A Christmas Carol (December 2 - 23, 2011) will bisect the season. In the spring, GLTF will present Agatha Christie's murder mystery masterpiece, The Mousetrap (March 9 - 25, 2012) followed by Shakespeare's tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet (April 13 - 28, 2012). The Festival will crown its season with a landmark, musical salute to Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway's greatest composer-lyricists, entitled Sondheim on Sondheim (May 30 - June 17, 2012).

"Our golden anniversary season will be a celebration of the rich legacy of Great Lakes Theater Festival's commitment to the classics, the city of Cleveland, and our fifty year history as one of the region's most vital providers of educational programming," said Fee. "We're planning our most expansive programming in decades, a six-play season running from September through June, featuring two of Shakespeare's most captivating plays, The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet; an iconic murder mystery from the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap; our traditional holiday offering by Mr. Dickens, A Christmas Carol; and a pair of musicals - one, a daring classic, Cabaret and the other, the newest work by America's greatest composer for the theatre, Sondheim On Sondheim."

Great Lakes Theater Festival's fiftieth anniversary season is generously funded by the citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The Festival receives additional season support from The Cleveland Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.

Five of the Festival's 2011-12 season offerings (Cabaret, Shrew, Mousetrap, Romeo and Juliet and Sondheim on Sondheim), will take place in GLTF's revolutionary, audience-friendly home at PlayhouseSquare's Hanna Theatre while A Christmas Carol will remain in its traditional Ohio Theatre setting.

Great Lakes Theater Festival's unique 550-seat home at the Hanna Theatre features a flexible thrust stage and offers its audiences an exciting and uniquely intimate theater experience. The Hanna's "Great Room" inspired design concept creates a single unified environment that integrates the artist and audience experience into one realm and dissolves the formal separation between the social experience of the lobby and the artistic experience of the stage. The new Hanna offers patrons a variety of seating options including traditional theater seats, club chairs, banquettes, private boxes and lounge/bar seating.

Subscriptions to Great Lakes Theater Festival's 2011-12 season are on sale now. An adult subscription to Great Lakes Theater Festival starts as low as $120. Student subscriptions begin at $39. For more information about becoming a Festival subscriber, patrons should contact the Great Lakes Theater Festival subscription office at (216) 664-6064 or visit www.greatlakestheater.org.

Single tickets will be available beginning in August. Regular priced adult single tickets will range from $15 - $70. Regular priced student/youth tickets for the Hanna Theatre are $13 ($26 for A Christmas Carol in the Ohio Theatre) and will be available for all performances. Further details and pricing specifics for single performance tickets will be announced in August. Single tickets will be available by calling (216) 241-6000, by ordering online at www.greatlakestheater.org and by visiting The PlayhouseSquare Ticket Office. Groups of ten or more receive discounts.

Great Lakes Theater Festival has brought the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to the widest possible audience since 1962. The first resident company of PlayhouseSquare, GLTF will celebrate its 30th year in downtown Cleveland this season. Festival programming reaches 85,000 adults and students annually.

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