PCPA Theaterfest to Present US Premiere of Schwartz's MY FAIRYTALE 8/12-8/19

Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts Theaterfest is pleased to present the American Premiere of My Fairytale, a musical about Hans Christian Andersen. The musical is composed by Stephen Schwartz, the award-winning composer of Godspell, Pippin and Wicked, and will be presented in time for the 2011 centennial celebration of Solvang, CA as a Danish-American community. This exclusive engagement will preview in Santa Maria's Marian Theatre August 12 - 19, 2011, then open under the stars in the Solvang Festival Theater August 26, playing through September 25, 2011.

Single tickets will go on sale in October. The creative team and principle casting will be announced at a future date.

From the darkened stage of the Royal National Theater in 1846, Hans Christian Andersen is launched on an epic adventure through the timeless landscape of his own imagination. What he discovers there changes not only his life but the world. His life's fairytale, illuminated by beauty and longing, was the genesis for some of the world's most beloved stories. My Fairytale was first produced by Flemming Enevold as Mit Eventyr in 2005 as part of Denmark's bi-centennial celebration of Andersen's birth. This gorgeous new musical revels in the stories from Andersen's imagination and is both an enlightening journey into the soul of the artist and a heartfelt celebration of the wonderful influence of the Danish spirit on the world.

PCPA Theaterfest and Executive Producer Michael Jackowitz will bring My Fairytale to Solvang in the summer of 2011. The production will coincide with the centennial celebration of the founding of the Danish American community in Solvang. Solvang, CA is located in the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley wine country in Santa Barbara County.

Artistic Director Mark Booher is delighted to take part in bringing this exclusive production to PCPA Theaterfest, "I'm very excited about the prospect of introducing My Fairytale to our audiences here on the California Central Coast, especially in conjunction with the Solvang centennial celebration. The opportunity to work with wonderful artists like Stephen Schwartz and Flemming Enevold, together with the caliber of artists the project will bring to work with our stellar resident company, is going to be a thrill for us and for our audiences."

To help launch this American premiere, Mr. Schwartz will be in brief residence at PCPA, assisting with the development of PCPA's production. In anticipation of this unique theatrical event Mr. Schwartz said, "I've always felt that Solvang was the perfect place to present My Fairytale. The fact that this show, written for Denmark's bicentennial celebration of HC Andersen's birth, will now be produced in celebration of Solvang's centennial makes it seem even more special to me."

Flemming Enevold, who conceived the original musical, is also enthusiastic about sharing the work with an American audience, "I know of Solvang and think that the idea of having a version of My Fairytale there would be splendid. Stephen Schwartz and I had a fantastic collaboration and I think the show is something very special."

After studying piano and composition at Julliard, graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a BFA in Drama, and then a short stint as a record producer, Stephen Schwartz began to work in Broadway theatre. His first major credit was the title song from the play Butterflies Are Free. That song was also featured in the film version.  His credits and renown exploded in the 1970s (Godspell, Pippin), and have continued to this day. At one point his music was on Broadway in Godspell, Pippin, and The Magic Show simultaneously. In 2008, Mr. Schwartz's musical Wicked reached its 1900th performance on Broadway making Mr. Schwartz the only songwriter in Broadway history ever to have three shows run more than 1900 performances. Since then Wicked has surpassed 2700 performances and continues to play on Broadway, across the country, and internationally. In 2009, Mr. Schwartz presented his first opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, with Opera Santa Barbara, and Séance is now slated for production with the New York City Opera in 2011. In film, Schwartz has collaborated with composer Alan Menken. The pair earned Oscars and Grammys for their work on Disney's Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Schwartz also provided songs for DreamWorks' first animated feature, The Prince of Egypt, earning him another Academy Award for the song "When You Believe." His latest Disney collaboration, also with Menken, was for Enchanted. In addition to stage and film, Mr. Schwartz has released two CDs, Reluctant Pilgrim and Uncharted Territory.  He has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Theatre Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre where Wicked has played since October 2003. Applause Books has recently released Carol deGiere's Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked.  In 2004 Stephen Schwartz was asked by his friend Philip LaZebnik (one of the writers of Pocahontas and Prince of Egypt - and now resident of Denmark) to contribute some songs to a show to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen.  For more information on Schwartz, visit www.stephenschwartz.com.

Flemming Enevold, who conceived of Mit Eventyr for Denmark's bi-centennial celebrations of Andersen's birth, is considered the leading musical actor in Denmark. He was educated at the National Theatre School in 1975 and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music 1975-77. Mr. Enevold appeared at the Royal Theatre in Denmark in 1977-1980 seasons and again from 1987 to 1989, where he specialized as an actor in the classical repertoire. He has also starred in variety of genres, especially musicals, including Pirates of Penzance, Esther, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables and has also co-written, produced, directed, and acted in some of the most famous Danish musicals. Mr. Enevold was director of the Rialto Theatre 1989-91 and of the Gladsaxe theater from 1992 to 2006. Under his management the theaters presented finely honed productions of Cyrano, The Three Musketeers, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and The Taming of the Shrew in addition to the 2005 world premiere of My Fairytale (Mit Eventyr).

In addition to writing the book for My Fairytale, Philip LaZebnik wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for the Disney animated features Pocahontas and Mulan and the DreamWorks animated features Prince of Egypt and The Legend of El Dorado and contributed to the scripts of Antz, Shrek, and numerous other films. He is currently active in Europe as a screenwriter and story consultant for features by Nordic Films, Radar Films, Zentropa, Angel Films, and others. He has many television credits and has written stage musicals. LaZebnik has served on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America West (2001-02), the Writers Branch executive committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2001-03), and the juries of the 1997-98 Emmy Awards, 2002 Annie Awards, 2002 Buster Film Festival (Copenhagen), and 2003 Galway Film Festival (Ireland). His screenplay for Mulan won the 1998 Annie Award for best animation screenplay.

PCPA Theaterfest (www.pcpa.org) is a professional conservatory theater that has been producing plays and musicals on the Central Coast of California for 46 years. PCPA has its base of operations, which houses the Equity theater company and two-year training programs, in Santa Maria, California. Since 1974 PCPA has partnered with Solvang Theaterfest to bring its artistic work to the Danish community in Solvang, California. The Solvang Festival Theater is a 700 seat open air amphitheater situated in downtown Solvang.

Solvang (www.solvangusa.com) is a community steeped in Danish heritage and PCPA performed its first productions in the community in 1971, before the construction of the Festival Theater, in Hans Christian Andersen Park. The downtown district of Solvang features architectural designs reminiscent of "old world" Denmark and is home to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, which holds a number of Andersen's original letters, photographs and cutouts as well as exhibits about his life and work.

PCPA Theaterfest has a great tradition of producing a diversity of theatrical genre, classical and new plays, and a great variety of musical theater. As a portion of this, there is a strong history of doing musicals inspired by children's literature, fantasy, folk and fairytales, perfectly positioning PCPA to bring My Fairytale to this uniquely suited Danish American community on the California Central Coast.  For more information or to purchase tickets for PCPA's 2010-2011 season, which also includes Peter Pan, The 39 Steps, Pride and Prejudice, Hairspray, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Caroline or Change, visit www.pcpa.org or call (805) 922-8313. Single tickets go on sale for the 2010 - 2011 season this October.

Photo Credit: Linda Lenzi

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