PATCHOGUE, NY – JANUARY 31, 2008 – The Clare Rose Playhouse, a community theatre located on the Long Island Campus of St. Joseph’s College, will continue its 2007-08 season with Violet, a musical about a young woman’s pilgrimage across America. The show will run February 22 to March 9, 2008.

The main character, Violet, steps off the train in Tulsa, Oklahoma from rural North Carolina with a ghastly scar on her face, in pursuit of a televangelist who she believes can heal her facial abnormality. Along her journey, she finds herself involved in a love triangle with two soldiers who teach her about love and beauty through racial and social differences. The tale is one inspired by the saying, “beauty is only skin deep” and has won the 1997 Richard Rodgers Production Award for a new musical, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, among others.

Violet, with book and lyrics written by Brian Crawley, was based on the short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts, one of the south’s most accomplished contemporary writers. The music, composed by Tony-nominated Jeanne Tesori, mixes gospel, bluegrass and blues to create the drawl of the south and bring the characters to life.

Individual tickets for this show are priced at $14; $12 for students and seniors. Show times are 8:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 3:00 p.m. on Sundays. For reservations or further information, please call the box office at (631) 654-0199.

The Clare Rose Playhouse, which serves as a major teaching facility for the College’s theatre courses, is accessible via the South Service Road of Sunrise Highway, just east of Exit 52 (Waverly Avenue) in Patchogue, on the northeast corner of the campus of St. Joseph’s College. A former cottage converted in 1985 through the generosity and guidance of the man for whom it is named, the Playhouse serves as a major teaching facility for the college’s theater courses and is a training ground for young actors. The Playhouse is the site of community theater productions of musicals, dramas, comedies, cabaret acts, musical performances, dance troupes and comedians.

About St. Joseph's College

St. Joseph’s College has been dedicated to providing a diverse population of students in the New York metropolitan area with an affordable education rooted in the liberal arts tradition since 1916. Independent and coeducational, the College provides a strong academic and value-oriented education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, aiming to prepare each student for a life characterized by integrity, intellectual and spiritual values, social responsibility, and service. With campuses located in the Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn and in Patchogue, Suffolk, Long Island, the College offers degrees in over 22 majors, special course offerings and certificates, affiliated and pre-professional programs through its School of Arts and Sciences and its School of Professional and Graduate Studies.