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It's a Wonderful Life is about second chances. Sometimes these come after a dark, personal turning point on a bridge, and sometimes they come after a well-received local theatre run — they don't always have to be a bad thing, now do they? This year, Ken Falkenhagen returns with his one-man interpretation of the quintessential holiday film, This Wonderful Life, which graced the Performing Arts Collective Alliance (PACA) stage in 2016.

In 2014 PACA was able to complete phase I of its build-out to include necessary components that ensure that our artistic programming could continue to grow and expand beyond its initial stage.

Either way, Erie's own Performing Artists Collective Alliance, or PACA, is bringing yet another unique theatrical release to the stage with a brief two-week run of Gorey Stories, "a musical collage of Goreyana" (to quote Mel Gussow in the New York Times c. 1977), based on Gorey's illustrations and poetry, which have been adapted into 18 playlets by Stephen Currens and set to music by David Aldrich.

This autumn the Performing Arts Collective Alliance (PACA) is bringing some of the finest examples of 20th century theater to Erie, and the upcoming Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is no exception. Director Mark Tanenbaum is on a roll, following up his production of Equus with this Edward Albee classic.

In 1971, playwright Sir Peter Shaffer was talking to a friend who had attended a dinner party, at which the topic of conversation included a disturbed young man who had used a spike to blind 26 horses. The friend relayed this gruesome anecdote, but failed to expound on the details. Shaffer wrote in 1973, "…it was enough to arouse in me an intense fascination."