VALDOSTA – Peach State Summer Theatre’s 2025 season is the winner of nine Broadway World Tallahassee awards.
Release:
VALDOSTA — Peach State Summer Theatre’s 2025 season — “The Wizard of Oz,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” and “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline”— is the winner of nine Broadway World Tallahassee awards. This includes the highly coveted Favorite Local Theatre honor.
This is the fourth consecutive year Peach State Summer Theatre has been named Favorite Local Theatre, a recognition of its showstopping community theatre scene across the South Georgia-North Florida area.
“This award belongs to the entire PSST family — our artists, staff, students, volunteers, and audiences,” said Hank Rion, artistic director of Peach State Summer Theatre. “Earning it for a fourth year inspires us to keep raising the bar, to take creative risks, and to remain deeply invested in both artistic excellence and mentorship. It’s a powerful reminder that when a community believes in the work, it pushes us to do even better.”
Hank Rion won Best Direction of a Musical for his work on PSST’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” a sci-fi tale about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that needs human blood to survive.
PSST’s production of “The Wizard of Oz” won Best Musical and Best Ensemble honors.
A timeless reminder of courage, compassion, wisdom, and home, PSST’s “The Wizard of Oz” also had five cast members earn individual honors — Aubrey Anderson, Best Performer in a Musical; Clara Jean Kelly, Best Costume Design of a Play or Musical; Sarah Wildes Arnett, Best Choreography of a Play or Musical; Zach Cramer, Best Sound Design of a Play or Musical; and John Hemphill Jr., Best Lighting of a Play or Musical.
Peach State Summer Theatre, or PSST, is Georgia’s premiere professional summer stock theatre. Each summer, dozens of performers, technicians, managers, and creators gather on the campus of Valdosta State University to rehearse, build, and present a series of entertaining musicals in rotating repertory.
Peach State Summer Theatre started in 1990 as the Jekyll Island Musical Theatre Festival. In 2005, the summer theatre program relocated to the campus of VSU and was renamed PSST.
The Georgia Legislature designated Peach State Summer Theatre the Official Musical Theatre of the State of Georgia.
VSU’s H. Duke Guthrie serves as the managing director of Peach State Summer Theatre.
Visit www.valdosta.edu/psst for details about Peach State Summer Theatre’s 2026 season, which kicks off June 5 and runs through July 4.
