Star-Studded Season at the Queensborough Community College Humanities Theatre and Performing Arts Center Will Launch in February 2025
Queensborough’s Humanities Theatre and Performing Arts Center (QPAC) will usher in its 2025 season with a blockbuster line-up of hit shows beginning in February with Legacy in Concert (Motown). Four shows in March begin with Hotel California: The Original Tribute to the Eagles, The Grand Shanghai Circus, Invincible! A Glorious Tribute to Michael Jackson, and Sal “The Voice” Valentinetti (Rat Pack Tribute). The curtain will rise in April for Verismo Opera Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
These shows will premiere in QPAC’s fully renovated, 790-seat theatre that rivals the best Broadway has to offer—the only difference being that QPAC is much more convenient to audiences from the borough of Queens and surrounding areas who can now embrace QPAC as their own. Among its many features are box seats for prime vantage points, concession stands, state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems and accessibility accommodation.
Members of the college community, including students, also call this space their own. It is a learning laboratory to integrate the arts into the learning process for students to hone their craft.
“Our message to students is the door to QPAC is always open,” said Mark Russell Amsterdam, who has been named Interim Executive Director of QPAC. His service to Queensborough spans three decades in technical theatre and artistic achievement as Managing and Executive Director of the Queensborough Orchestra and the Executive Director of the Queensborough Chorus. Additionally, Mark was the Executive Director of the world-renowned New York Virtuosi Chamber Symphony in residence at Lincoln Center.
“QPAC is not a stand-alone facility, and we invite student participation in various facets of the creative process.” Mark added that the diversity of the shows matches the extraordinary diversity of the student body and that students should have access to the professional theatre experience.
So far this year, in addition to the spring and fall plays produced by the Communication, Theatre and Media Production department, QPAC featured student actors who took the stage to perform Letters from Anne & Martin as part of a collaboration between the QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium, Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and QPAC in a semester-long project entitled “Performance as Prevention.” QPAC is where student dancers hold their annual spring concert and where first semester students recently gathered to see Ahmed M. Badr, distinguished author, poet, and social entrepreneur, who read excerpts from his groundbreaking book, "While the Earth Sleeps, We Travel-Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young People Around the World.”
Throughout its half-century history, QPAC has successfully produced over 1,200 performances and served over one million audience members. QPAC is committed to expanding public access to the arts for everyone, including Queens' working families, younger generations, and seniors, so they can enjoy first-rate performances locally. QPAC strives to offer multi-cultural entertainment that mirrors the diversity of the borough.
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