Ray Ficca Takes Over As Totem Pole's Artistic Director

After 23 years of guiding Totem Pole Playhouse into national prominence as a premiere professional summer theatre, Carl Schurr and Wil Love are stepping down at the end of the 2008 season. As Producing Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director, respectively, this theatrical duo has produced, directed and acted in well over one hundred productions since assuming their current positions in 1985. Ray Ficca, long time friend of Schurr and Love and a resident company member at The Playhouse will become the artistic director in September of this year.

Totem Pole Playhouse is one of eleven theatres of its type still in operation in the United States. Recognized professionals such as John Ritter, Curtis Armstrong, and Keir Dullea have performed live at Totem Pole Playhouse.

Love first came to Totem Pole in the summer of 1971 and Schurr followed in 1975 and for years worked with their predecessor, the late William H. Putch and his wife, Jean Stapleton, and their children Pam and John Putch. When William Putch passed away unexpectedly in 1983, daughter Pam Putch, together with Schurr and Love guided The Playhouse through the 1984 summer-a season celebrating Putch's 30 years of producing at the Caledonia State Park theatre. The remaining Putch family members left Totem Pole later that year and in 1985 Schurr and Love became the Artistic Directors.

In addition to overseeing the summer seasons at Totem Pole Playhouse, Schurr and Love mounted productions that would later be moved to Philadelphia's prestigious Walnut Street Theatre.

Ray Ficca has been a professional actor since 1991 in New York, Washington, DC, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey and currently serves as the President of the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Washington. He has been a company member at Totem Pole since 2005.

As he prepares to assume his new post as artistic director of the 58-year-old Playhouse, Ficca sights maintaining the professional excellence of Totem Pole as his top priority. "Carl and Wil have brought Totem Pole to The National Theatre scene and have provided South Central Pennsylvania with a top notch professional theatre. In moving Totem Pole into the future, I will be certain to maintain the excellent product they worked so hard to create."

Schurr and Love will continue to spend summers in Caledonia and be available to act and direct in productions at The Playhouse. "Totem Pole has become a second home to us," states Schurr. "If we thought that our decades of working at this magical institution were at an end, this transition would be extremely difficult. Knowing that we will be working with Ray and the company and staff he brings to The Playhouse is a dream come true."

The 2008 Totem Pole summer will feature the three gentlemen working together in a season that includes:

SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Final Adventure A Play by Stephen Dietz
Based on the 1899 Play by William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle.
May 31 -June 15, 2008
LYING IN STATE By David Hyer
June 17-29, 2008

THE UNDERPANTS Steve Martin's Adaptation of a Play by Carl Sternheim
July 1-13, 2008

BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE By John Van Druten
July 15-27, 2008

OATMEAL AND KISSES By Murray Schisgal
July 29-August 10, 2008

THE TAFFETAS Conceived by Rick Lewis
August 12-24, 2008