ACTING SHAKESPEARE: A ONE-MAN MUSICAL to Play Free Performance at Pugsley Park
Performer Kamran Saliani brings his revival of Sir Ian McKellen's solo show to Peekskill with the Peekskill Arts Council.
Peekskill, NY — A free public performance of Acting Shakespeare: A One-Man Musical will be presented at the recently renovated Pugsley Park on July 25, 2026, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, offering Peekskill residents an accessible, high-quality Shakespeare in the Park experience.
The performance is being developed in collaboration with the Peekskill Arts Council and Peekskill Parks and Recreation. The event will help showcase Pugsley Park's potential as a vibrant site for future arts programming while supporting community bonding, civic life, and shared cultural experience.
Acting Shakespeare: A One-Man Musical is an official revival of Sir Ian McKellen's legendary solo show, created with his personal blessing and reimagined for contemporary audiences through music, humor, and an American lens. Performed by Kamran Saliani, Actor-Manager and Founder of Irvington Shakespeare Company, this 90-minute solo performance blends Shakespeare's most powerful scenes and soliloquies with storytelling, history, and original musical parodies inspired by Bo Burnham, alongside excerpts from James Shapiro's Shakespeare in a Divided America.
The project is designed to make Shakespeare accessible, engaging, and relevant for broad public audiences, including people who may be experiencing live Shakespeare for the first time. Rather than presenting the Bard as distant or academic, the show invites audiences to experience Shakespeare as living language that helps us better understand ourselves, our communities, and our world.
Through humor, emotional honesty, and theatrical intimacy, Acting Shakespeare explores how Shakespeare reflects America in all its complexity: the good, the bad, and the beautiful. The performance offers audiences catharsis, reflection, inspiration, and hope.
“This project is about bringing professional theater directly into public spaces and making Shakespeare feel alive, immediate, and available to everyone,” said Kamran Saliani. “Pugsley Park is a beautiful setting for this kind of community-centered performance, and we are thrilled to share this work with Peekskill residents.”
Saliani is a Hudson Valley-born Iranian-American theater artist and graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned his BFA in Drama. For his work as an actor-producer, he received a 2023 Westchester Wunderkind Award, and the Westchester County Board of Legislators proclaimed May 25, 2023, “Kamran Saliani Day.”
Acting Shakespeare: A One-Man Musical is a high-impact, low-footprint project especially well suited for parks, libraries, schools, and small theaters. Its portable format allows professional live theater to be presented affordably and flexibly in public spaces.
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