At The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (PSF) summer 2022 season, PSF Producting Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy will once again bound down the aisle of the Main Stage theater in Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University, Center Valley, and exclaim with sparkling eyes and a welcoming voice: “It’s opening night!”

The summer 2022 PSF season is the first season in two years that Mulcahy is doing the honors.

Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shutdown, PSF did not present a summer 2020 season and in summer 2021 presented a hybrid season with an outdoor stage, indoor one-person shows and live-streaming and taped performances.

The summer 2022 PSF season is also the last season that Mulcahy will be doing the honors.

With the conclusion of the season in early August, Mulcahy is stepping down as PSF producing artistic director.

“This is the 19th season. What is the right amount of time that someone would stay at a job like this? I don’t think there is an answer to this,” says Mulcahy self-reflectively in a phone interview May 17 with Lehigh Valley Press.

“I think a lot of it’s personal. I’m kind of doing the life math of time one has left and what to do with it,” Mulcahy, 57, says.

“I made this decision more than a year ago. It feels like the right timing for me and the right timing for the Festival,” says Mulcahy.

In a press release last summer, Mulcahy stated, “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.”

Mulcahy will return to teaching full-time as a professor in the DeSales University Division of Performing Arts. After a sabbatical in fall 2022, Mulcahy will teach four courses. While PSF producing artistic director, he continued to teach one course. PSF is the professional Equity theater at DeSales University.

Mulcahy says he will miss aspects of his role as PSF producing artistic director:

“I’ve been chairing our Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Working Group. That’s been one of the things I’m going to miss most. I will miss to follow through on a lot of things that we set in motion.

“We have the components of an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Plan. We’re already implementing a lot of those elements. I’ll take my commitment to continue that work over to the [DeSales] University side.”

Mulcahy says he will not miss some aspects of his role as PSF producing artistic director:

“Every company in the world has trouble staffing. And we’re no exception. The seasonal positions are where it’s impacting us most.”

The PSF staff expands to 150-plus during the summer production season.

“Some people just flat out left the business during Covid or re-evaluated,” says Mulcahy.

“There’s been a tilt about how much time and energy goes into staffing and personnel management.

“I’ve always enjoyed all aspects of this job. I’ve enjoyed this job more when that aspect took up one third of the job rather than two-thirds.

“I had the good fortune to be a tenured professor before I took this job.”

Mulcahy became PSF producing artistic director in 2003. Mulcahy is collaborating with the PSF board of directors, staff, and PSF parent company DeSales University “to support a seamless transition to its next artistic leader.” A national search has been underway.

Mulcahy joined the DeSales faculty as Head of Acting in 1996. Mulcahy led PSF longer than any previous leader, including PSF founder Rev. Gerard J. Schubert, OSFS.

According to a PSF press release in August 2021 when it was announced that Mulcahy would be stepping down, under Mulcahy’s leadership, PSF attracted its first Tony Award-winning artists to its summer seasons, expanded its offerings to include musicals, productions in repertory, and as many as three Shakespeare plays per summer season.

Also, PSF doubled its attendance, served its one-millionth patron, quintupled its endowment, eliminated its debt, created a modest cash reserve, grew and diversified its board of directors and company, and secured its first and subsequent grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other major arts grant-makers, stated the press release.

In the last decade, “PSF has become just one of a handful of professional theaters on the continent offering this range of programming to destination patrons in a single summer season.”

Mulcahy led the 2009 strategic planning process that resulted in PSF’s Vision 2030, “a commitment to world-class professional theater,” and a body of work that garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playbill magazine, and The Washington Post.

Mulcahy led The Campaign for PSF in 2013-2015, which raised more than $4 million, primarily for endowment growth to support PSF artistic and education programming.

Mulcahy supported added accessibility programming, championed PSF education programs, increased the reach of its WillPower school tours, and created a “Shakespeare for Kids” production each season, according to the press release.

“It’s a bucks-stops position,” Mulcahy says of the producing artistic director role. “And it comes with a certain amount of responsibility. It asked a lot of my family to have a job of this scale, as it would for anyone.

“Going back to full-time teaching at DeSales is a homecoming. It’s what I came to DeSales to do. I had intentionally left the industry. And then I found myself back in the industry for 19 years.”

As a professional director, actor and fight director, Mulcahy’s credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, television and radio. He trained on both sides of the Atlantic and acted with industry luminaries, including Don Cheadle, Angela Bassett, Cynthia Nixon and Tony Shaloub at the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Roundabout Theatre, Hartford Stage, Great Lakes Theatre Festival, and the Walnut Street Theatre.

Mulcahy’s 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 Off-Broadway productions starring Marcia Gay Harden, John Mahoney, Patrick Dempsey and John Savage.

Mulcahy directed Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga in “The Real Thing,” and, for PSF, directed “The Winter’s Tale,” “Henry IV, Part 1,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “Julius Caesar” and “Shakespeare in Love.” Mulcahy received degrees in acting and directing from Syracuse University.

“The plan that was put in place in 2003 at PSF was the right plan and that brought me, and Dennis [Razze, PSF Associate Artistic Director] into these positions.”

Casey William Gallagher will continue as PSF Managing Director.

A successor to Mulcahy is expected to be announced in late June or in July. PSF is working with Management Consultants for the Arts, Stamford, Conn., on the national search.

According to the Management Consultants’ website, “As PSF transitions into new artistic leadership, it will also transition into a co-leadership structure of Artistic Director and Managing Director, each reporting directly to the PSF Board of Directors.

“The new Artistic Director will join Casey William Gallagher, PSF Managing Director, who has served in multiple roles for PSF over the past 25 years. ... Each will report to the Board of Directors directly.

”The new Artistic Director will work in a co-leadership structure ... This will be a new leadership structure for PSF; previously, the Managing Director reported to the Producing Artistic Director.”

Says Mulcahy of his final season as PSF producing artistic director:

“I’m hoping to just enjoy it. I feel 100 percent at peace with this transition. There’s a poignancy to it. I keep hearing in my head, ‘One Last Time,’ from ‘Hamilton.’”