Simonetti
A new take on a Valley Shakespeare Festival (VSF) tradition. This year, Tom Simonetti will be playing all the roles from Scrooge to Tiny Tim in ‘A Christmas Carol.’
“The adaptation is based on the one we have used in our seven years of existence,” said founder and executive director Tom Simonetti. “My director, Andie Lerner, and I have gone through and tightened up a few parts to stream-line the themes of the story because of the ‘solo’ aspect.”
“The idea to go solo came from our touring production of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ where two actors played all roles. It is a long tradition that Charles Dickens would read a cut down version of his own work to the public (in America it premiered in Boston),” he said.
This year, Tom said that VSF, which is a 501c3 non-profit organization, hit a financial snag, but wanted to make sure that they kept the tradition of “A Christmas Carol” going and being presented free to the public! Many of the VSF shows are presented free to the public even though they are not free to produce.
“We bring in Equity actors, which means we have to spend money for the casting call, the audition space rentals, advertising for the audition call, housing and transportation for the actors, and of course, the actual cost of staging and paying for the show,” stated Board Chair, Kayleigh Mihalko, adding, “Being able to have Tom take on this year’s rendition of A Christmas Carol solo drastically reduces our costs for this show and helps us stay in a good place going into a new season in 2020.”
You will have two opportunities to see A Christmas Carol this year. Both performances will be held at Plumb Memorial Library in Shelton (65 Wooster Street).
Friday, December 6th at 7pm
Saturday, December 7th at 1pm
The performances are free, but if you would like to reserve a seat, you can do so through Facebook.com/ValleyShakespeareFestival or on the website www.VSFestival.org.
