MARY POPPINS, SPRING AWAKENING, and More Featured in PCPA's 50th Anniversary Season 2013-2014

Heralding a new season and ushering in the newly renovated Marian Theatre, the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts (PCPA) begins its 50th year with a breathtaking line-up that features new works - including a world premiere - comedies, the best of Broadway's musical theatre, dramas, and a rock musical.

"Anniversaries are always times to celebrate the best of the past while we work and aspire toward the brightest possible future. This season we continue the tradition of bringing the best of the established theatrical canon together with sparkling new work, to edify, entertain and enlighten our community as we have for the past five decades," said Mark Booher, PCPA Artistic Director.

The 2013-2014 Season begins in November with a show straight from Broadway, Mary Poppins. PCPA will be one of the first regional theatres in the country to produce this delightful high-flying family musical for the holidays. The practically perfect nanny helps the audience learn to take their medicine with a spoonful of sugar, find the silver lining in every situation, and realize that sometimes we should just use the winds of change to go fly a kite. Mary Poppins plays in the Marian Theatre, November 7 - December 22, 2013.

In February, patrons are invited to come and experience the greatest English language play ever written - Shakespeare's sublime story of treachery and revenge, The Tragedy of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. Hamlet teeters on the edge of madness when he learns his uncle has killed his father and married his mother in this journey of deceit and realization. Hamlet plays in the Marian Theatre, February 13 - March 2, 2014.

Playing in February and March is the Tony Award-winning coming of age rock musical based on the censored 1890s German drama, Spring Awakening. A group of teenagers, boiling with passion and roiling with guilt, discover the beauty and risks of naïveté when their forbidden longings lead to tragic consequences. Spring Awakening plays in the Severson Theatre, February 27 - March 23, 2014.

The dizziest, funniest, backstage farce ever written, Noises Off careens through the rollercoaster lives of a hapless troupe of provincial actors. In a brilliant turnabout of door slamming miscues and misunderstandings, onstage romantic intrigues are foiled by bunglers and burglars, spinning the play toward a hysterical climax. Noises Off will play in the Marian Theatre, April 24 - May 11, 2014 then in the Solvang Festival Theater June 12 - 29, 2014.

Heating up the summer season is the heavenly musical comedy, Forever Plaid. This hallmark jukebox musical centers on a quartet whose dream of recording an album was ended by a bus collision on the way to their first big concert. Now they've been miraculously revived for a posthumous show that never was. This show features great nostalgic pop hits of the 1950's and rollin' in the aisles from the delightful patter of the original clean-cut boy band - the Plaids. Forever Plaid plays in the Marian Theatre, June 19 - 29, 2014 and in the Solvang Festival Theater, July 4 - 27, 2014.

Oklahoma!, Rodgers & Hammerstein's first and most innovative collaboration set the standard for musical theatre that's still being followed today. With a grandeur as great as the wind that comes sweeping across the plain, Oklahoma! captures the dream of a frontier full of possibility in a brand-new state. Oklahoma! plays in the Marian Theatre, July 16 - 26, 2014 then in the Solvang Festival Theater, August 1 - 24, 2014.

From the playwright who brought The Heart's Desire and Invierno comes The San Patricios. This world premiere is the poignant and politically charged story of the San Patricio battalion. It's a strikingly contemporary play-with-music, packed with the explosive power of true history. This conflict literally shaped the future of a nation and left a resonance that's still felt in our world today. The San Patricios plays in the Marian Theatre, August 7 - 23, 2014 then in the Solvang Festival Theater, August 28 - September 7, 2014.

Crowning PCPA's 50th celebration season is the intelligent, intricate and imaginative, 36 Views. At its heart is the discovery of an apparently ancient manuscript - a priceless Japanese pillow book - and the attempt to validate its authenticity. The search for the "original" becomes an exotic game of greed, sensuality and shifting perceptions. 36 Views plays in the Severson Theatre, September 11 - 28, 2014.

Tickets for the 2013-2014 season will go on sale this fall.

For more information, visit www.pcpa.org.

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