Hershey Felder Raises Funds for TheatreWorks

Internationally-acclaimed actor, pianist, and filmmaker Hershey Felder packed the house and raised the roof while also raising more than $140,000 for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. Upon hearing of the company’s Save TheatreWorks Now campaign, Felder donated his services and travel costs, flying in to stage a one-night-only benefit performance of Hershey Felder’s Great American Songbook Sing-Along at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. TheatreWorks patrons paid $45 to $1,000 each to raise their voices while bringing the Tony Award recipient theatre company closer to its fundraising goal. During this special event, Felder shared fascinating background stories and led the audience through 100 years of American music, featuring a selection of songs by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and many more. Thanks to this boost from Felder, the company has now raised $2.5 million towards its goal of $3 million, which must be raised by the end of November in order for the company to complete its current season.

Felder won additional thunderous applause by announcing his return to TheatreWorks in the new year, giving his enthusiastic audience the scoop: the tour-de-force performer will be bringing his hit solo show Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone to TheatreWorks for a limited engagement in February 2024. During that engagement, Felder will also reprise his Great American Songbook Sing-Along, offering the opportunity for additional audiences to join Felder in song. “We are so thankful to Hershey for this enormously successful concert, and thrilled he will come back to perform in February,” Said TheatreWorks Executive Director Debbie Chinn. “With patrons purchasing tickets to Hershey’s February engagement, along with final contributions from the public, we are confident this will help close the final gap of our fundraising campaign and put us over the top.”

Captivating audiences around the world, including on Broadway, in London’s West End, and more, Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone illuminates the life and music of the legendary tunesmith whose work shaped a distinctly American style of music, including “Rhapsody in Blue,” An American in Paris, and many more iconic American standards. Tickets for Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone and Hershey Felder’s Great American Songbook Sing-Along will be available to the public at a later date.

Hershey Felder: American Theatre magazine has said, “Hershey Felder is in a category all his own.” Following 28 years of continuous stage work and over six thousand live performances throughout the U.S. and abroad, Hershey Felder created Live from Florence, an arts broadcasting company, which has produced more than a dozen theatrical films to date. They include the world premiere musicals Nicholas, Anna & Sergei, the story of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Puccini, the story of famed opera composer Giacomo Puccini; Before Fiddler, a musical story about writer Sholem Aleichem; and others, all benefiting theatres and arts organizations across the U.S.. Programming is currently available at www.hersheyfelder.net. Felder has given performances of his self-created solo productions at some of the world’s most prestigious theatres and has consistently broken box office records. His shows include George Gershwin Alone (Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre, West End’s Duchess Theatre); Monsieur Chopin; Beethoven; Maestro (Leonard Bernstein); Franz Liszt in Musik, Lincoln: An American Story; Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin; Our Great Tchaikovsky; and A Paris Love Story. His compositions and recordings include Aliyah, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra; Fairytale, a musical; Les Anges de Paris, Suite for Violin and Piano; Song Settings; Saltimbanques for Piano and Orchestra; Etudes Thematiques for Piano; and An American Story for Actor and Orchestra. Felder is the adaptor, director, and designer for the internationally performed play-with-music The Pianist of Willesden Lane with Steinway artist Mona Golabek; producer and designer for the musical Louis and Keely: ‘Live’ at the Sahara, directed by Taylor Hackford; and writer and director for Flying Solo, featuring opera legend Nathan Gunn. Felder has operated a full-service production company since 2001. He has been a scholar-in-residence at Harvard University’s Department of Music and is married to Kim Campbell, the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

Felder has become an enormous favorite among south Bay Area audiences through his appearances at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, where his stage productions have smashed box office records, including engagements of his wildly popular shows including Hershey Felder: Chopin in Paris, the regional premieres of Our Great Tchaikovsky and Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, and the World Premieres of Hershey Felder as Claude Debussy in A PARIS LOVE STORY and Hershey Felder: Beethoven. Just as in demand have been Felder’s Great American Songbook Sing-Alongs, occasionally staged during his runs at TheatreWorks, all of which sold out immediately.

On August 9, the Tony Award recipient theatre company, the only professional LORT (League of Resident Theatres) organization between San Francisco and Los Angeles, announced it urgently needed to raise $3 million by the end of November 2023 in order to complete its 53rd season. The financial shortfall is attributable to the devastating after-effects of the COVID pandemic, which saw audience attendance decline at live theatre productions across the country. Reaching its $3 million goal will enable the company to solidify contracts to actors, directors, and designers for the remainder of its season, scheduled to run through June 2024 at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, and the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

TheatreWorks, a 501c3 non-profit, is asking the public for donations of any size, and is also urging its community to show support through subscribing to this season’s productions. Since its August announcement, subscriptions have shot up, with some 500 additional TheatreWorks subscriptions purchased, more than doubling the amount sold in the same period for the prior season. The company also seeks a match for a $500,000 challenge grant by an anonymous donor, which must be paired with another new gift of at least $500,000; together the new gifts would catapult the company over its goal.

The company is currently presenting the West Coast Premiere of Heidi Armbruster’s Mrs. Christie, a modern look at what might have happened to Agatha Christie during the eleven days she vanished from public sight early in her career. The madcap mystery, which has received critical acclaim, runs through October 29 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, led by Artistic Director Giovanna Sardelli in partnership with Executive Director Debbie Chinn, presents a wide variety of contemporary plays and musicals, revitalizes great works of the past, and serves more than 100,000 patrons per year. Founded in 1970 by Robert Kelley, TheatreWorks has grown from a truly original Silicon Valley start-up to become one of the nation’s leading professional non-profit theatre companies. TheatreWorks was honored as the recipient of the 2019 Regional Theatre Tony Award. TheatreWorks also champions new work, offering artists support and a creative home as they develop new stories for the American theatre. Offstage, TheatreWorks’ arts education programs in local schools and arts engagement programs in Silicon Valley neighborhoods uplift its audiences and strengthen community bonds. Onstage and off, TheatreWorks welcomes the mosaic of people that embody the Bay Area and beyond, celebrating the transformative power of theatre to ignite imagination, inspire conversation, and enliven our souls.

Media sponsor for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s 2023/24 season is San Francisco Chronicle.

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