CENTER VALLEY, PA.: Patrick Mulcahy, producing artistic director of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (PSF), has announced that he will step down from the role at the end of the summer 2022 season. Mulcahy accepted the leadership position at PSF in 2003, reducing his previous faculty role at DeSales University. He led the festival for longer than any previous leader, including the founder, Rev. Gerard J. Schubert, OSFS. 

“Leading the Festival has been the honor of my life and has provided me with countless opportunities to continue to learn,” said Mulcahy in a statement. “A few years back, my wife and I began to talk about my returning to the faculty full-time. The timing is right for us, and we will continue to champion PSF to ‘ascend the brightest heaven of invention’ as patrons and fans.” 

The PSF’s board of directors, staff, and the festival’s parent company DeSales University will work alongside Mulcahy to transition towards its next artistic leader, beginning with an upcoming national search.

Under Mulcahy’s leadership, PSF attracted its first Tony-winning artists, expanded offerings to include musicals, eliminated debt, grew its board and company, and secured its first grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other major arts grant makers. Mulcahy also supported added accessibility programming, championed PSF’s education programs, increased the reach of its school tours, and created a Shakespeare for Kids production each season. 

“Patrick’s leadership of PSF is a fitting testament to his talents as a Renaissance man—a courageous strategist, thoughtful visionary, attentive fundraiser, effective manager, artist, motivator, and friend,” said PSF board president Judy Harris in a statement. “We hold enormous gratitude for all that Patrick has built and nurtured while leading PSF to the brightest of futures. We bear equal gratitude to DeSales University for having fostered the creation and growth of PSF, and for ensuring that Patrick return full-time to its esteemed faculty.”

As a professional director, actor, and fight director, Mulcahy’s credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatre, television, and radio. His acting career began with Joe Papp-directed New York Shakespeare Festival productions in Central Park and continued with Papp’s Shakespeare Marathon at NYSF in the late 1980s. He served as fight director for A Few Good Men on Broadway, and he directed Vera Farmiga in The Real Thing. For PSF he helmed The Winter’s Tale, Henry IV, Part 1, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Shakespeare in Love. Mulcahy holds degrees in acting and directing from Syracuse University.