Auditions Announced For Wilton Summer Student Playshop

WILTON — Take one veteran director, add six directors at least half his age and stir in six one act plays by one of America’s most talented contemporary playwrights and you have a summer theatrical experience to be savored.

For this summer’s Wilton Student Summer Playshop, director Skip Ploss (Arsenic and Old Lace, Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Fiasco’s aka My Big Fat Italian Feast, and others) has mixed things up a bit. He has recruited five aspiring directors to each take a single one act play by David Ives and direct it with himself acting as Executive Director/ Producer. Most of the directors are known to Wilton audiences.

Auditions have been scheduled for June 19 and 21 at the Playshop for students entering their freshman year of high school through anyone age 22. Production dates for the summer project will be weekends, July 20-29. Help is also needed for backstage tasks as well as those who will be acting.

Ketti Muschler will direct Variations on the Death of Trotsky where Trotsky, with an obvious wound of some proportion, lives different variations of his assassination at the hands of his gardener. Ms Muschler last appeared at The Playshop in last summer’s production of Taming of the Shrew and Wenceslas Square. She was recently seen as Maria in Wilton High School’s production of West Side Story.

Seth Kaproski is directing Words, Words, Words where the theory that if given the time and a typewriter, a chimpanzee could spontaneously create Hamlet. Mr Kaproski also appeared in Taming of the Shrew and Wenceslas Square last summer, and previous in Much Ado About Nothing, Beard of Avon, Hood, Peter Pan, Grease, and West Side Story at Wilton High School.

Jill Sapenoff will explore the short-lived love life of two young mayflies directing Time Flies. Ms Sapenoff is a graduating senior at Wilton High School who will attend NYU Film School in the fall. She has appeared in numerous Wilton High School performances including Lucky Stiff and West Side Story.

Sarah Anderson revisits some famous dead folk as she directs Mere Mortals. Three construction workers break for lunch and discover that each has his own secret. Ms Anderson previously appeared in Wenceslas Square at the high school and The Playshop as well as handled backstage work for Nunsense and West Side Story.

James Presson has appeared in Alice in Wonderland, An American Tail, Agamemnon, Defying Gravity and Much Ado About Nothing. He has also directed Martyr, Dearly Departed and My Father’s Story. He rewrote and directed Six Characters in Search of an Author for Wilton Stage Academy, a student run theater company which he has founded. Directing Sure Thing for the summer project, he wrecks the notion that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Auditions for these and The Philadelphia are set for 7:30 pm on Monday, June 19, and Wednesday, June 21, at The Wilton Playshop on Lover’s Lane. Audition pieces will be provided.

For more information visit the Playshop’s website at WiltonPlayshop.org or by contacting Mr Ploss at skip@WiltonPlayshop.org. There are many opportunities in this program for people both onstage and backstage.