GH: NURSES' BALL PREVIEW!

When Frank Valentini took over as GH’s executive producer in 2012, he brought back the Nurses’ Ball, an annual Port Charles tradition from 1994-2001, in time for the show’s 50th anniversary in 2013.

Now, as the show celebrates its 60th birthday, he’s mounting the spectacle for the first time since its Covidmandated hiatus.

“For me, personally, it’s a mixed blessing because it’s such an incredible amount of work,” Valentini admits. The team has been working really, really hard. We’ve been putting our hearts and souls into all the shows we’ve been doing this year and we’ve had some big, big shows and we’re playing a lot of stories and a lot of characters. To ask the cast and the crew to take on the Nurses’ Ball is always a tremendous amount of work, but everyone was up for it and really excited about it. And once we had picked the songs and read the scripts, we were sort of all-in.”

The behind-the-scenes efforts were a labor of love forthe show’ fans. Explains Valentini, What I’ve heard time and time again from the fans through email, through snail mail, through

Twitter, through texts, through the GH fan] conventions, through the actors, is that everybody wants the Nurses’ Ball back. So what more universal gift can you give to the GENERAL HOSPITAL fans than a Nurses’ Ball where, every day, there are 30-to-35 characters on screen, so you get all your favorites, veterans and newer characters, all mixing together in celebration of the hospital?”