Todd Gates, Gail Kern Paster and Tennille Sevigny Join Gulfshore Playhouse Board

Gulfshore Playhouse has announced the addition of Todd Gates, Gail Kern Paster and Tennille Sevigny to their Board of Directors. Todd, Gail, and Tennille join current Board Members Bob Harden, Chair, Kristen Coury, President, Sandy Pastoor, Secretary, Don Gunther, Jason Korn and Jack Nortman.

"I am grateful to see the level of support The Playhouse is now enjoying, evidenced by the addition of these three remarkable board members," states Bob Harden, Board Chair at Gulfshore Playhouse.

Todd Gates had been coming to Southwest Florida since 1969 and moved permanently to the area in 1984. As a Southwest Florida resident, he has been involved in the subcontractor project management of such projects as The Ritz Carlton Hotel, The Registry Resort and The Philharmonic Center of the Arts. In 1993, Mr. Gates founded GATES. Today, the firm is a fully integrated construction management, general contracting and design-build firm with offices in Florida and the Republic of Panama. In 2008, Gulfshore Business Magazine recognized him as one of the "Top 50 Power Players" in Southwest Florida, ranking him number 10 on their coveted list.

Gail Kern Paster took office as Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library on July 1, 2002 and retired from that position, as Director emerita in July 2011. Until July 2009, she also served as editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, the leading scholarly journal devoted to Shakespeare, published by the Folger Shakespeare Library in association with the George Washington University, where she was a Professor of English and had taught since 1974. She earned a B.A., magna cum laude, at Smith College. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books - The Idea of the City in the Age of Shakespeare (1986), The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (1993), and Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (2004). Dr. Paster has been a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and served as President of that organization in 2003. She was recently elected to the Board of Governors of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Tennille Sevigny is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Acadia Wealth Management, LLC, a firm she established in 2006 with her husband Aaron Sevigny. Tennille graduated from Fordham University in New York City with a B.A. in both Theatre and Media Studies. She began dancing at the age of 2 1/2, attended the esteemed School of American Ballet, and performed professionally until the age of 22. In New York City, she launched her career working for corporations such as EMI-Capitol Records Group, home to some of the world's most renowned artists, and DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc, internationally hailed as one of the top creative ad agencies. She continued to build her extensive and unique background through non-profit organizations such as the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2003, she and her husband moved to Naples where Tennille continued in the non-profit sector with a dual role in the Executive Office and Marketing Department at The Philharmonic Center for the Arts. Tennille has been a supporter and ambassador for Gulfshore Playhouse since 2006.

Gulfshore Playhouse is Naples' first and finest professional theatre company offering a variety of stimulating, thought-provoking and entertaining productions from important classics to Broadway hits and innovative new works. Our shows are conceived and created in-house using a team of professional designers and technicians as well as Equity actors with credits ranging from Broadway shows to film and television.

The Gulfshore Playhouse Theatre Education Project serves Southwest Florida through a wide variety of unique educational opportunities. Our programming provides people from our diverse community accessibility to the art of theatre. Program offerings range from ART SMART, our in-school residencies which teach content curriculum through the lively art of theatre during the school day, to the STAR (Student Theatre Artist in Residence) after-school theatre classes and Theatre Summer Camps. We offer a variety of educational opportunities for adults, from rigorous internship programs to classes taught by professional actors and members of the Gulfshore Playhouse creative team, and our newly unveiled Synergy Series, a series of panel discussions and talk-backs relating to our Mainstage productions.

All shows are presented at the Norris Center, 755 8th Avenue South, Naples. Subscriptions and single tickets are on sale now by calling the box office at 1-866-811-4111 or visiting our website at www.gulfshoreplayhouse.org. For more information, call 239-261-PLAY (7529).