Shaprio and Wagner's 'Pants!' Part of Clown Theatre Festival in Brooklyn

Brooklyn's Premier Off-Off Broadway Company kicks off its 42nd season with the social satire The Underpants. The Underpants, the Steve Martin adaptation from the classic German farce by Carl Sternheim, is directed by Seth Soloway (artistic director, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts), and features an entertaining veteran Gallery Players cast.

The Gallery Players' limited engagement of The Underpants runs September 13 - September 28, 2008: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. There are two additional Saturday matinee performances on September 20th and 27th at 2pm.

Steve Martin, the renowned comic actor and author provides a wild satire adapted from the classic German play about Louise and Theo Maske, a couple whose conservative existence is shattered when Louise's bloomers fall down in public. Though she pulls them up quickly, he thinks the incident will cost him his job as a government clerk. Louise's momentary display does not result in the feared scandal but it does attract two infatuated men, each of whom wants to rent the spare room in the Maskes' home. Oblivious of their amorous objectives, Theo splits the room between them, happy to collect rent from both the foppish poet and the whiny hypochondriac.

A New York institution since 1967, The Gallery Players has served actors and audiences alike for more than 4 decades by showcasing burgeoning new talent and offering a home base for theater professionals. "New York's Best Kept Secret" is the recipient of the Off-Off Broadway Review's 2000 Award for Lifetime Achievement and their production of Urinetown! the musical won the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Among its famous alumni are founding member Harvey Fierstein; Broadway regulars Nancy Anderson, Jeffry Denman and Diedre Goodwin; New York theater personality Seth Rudetsky and many others.

Summer Shapiro and April Wagner will present PANTS! as part of the 3rd Annual New York Clown Theatre Festival at the Brick Theater. The Brick Theater is located at 575 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (www.bricktheater.com/clown) Performances are  Sat. 9/6 at 9 pm, Sun. 9/7 at 8:30 pm, and Fri. 9/12 at 8:30 pm. All tickets $15 and are available at the door or through www.theatermania.com

Summer Shapiro recently premiered her original solo show In The Boudoir along side Cirque Du Soleil veteran, John Gilkey. And now, after performing another brand new original clown show with April Wagner, PANTS! The Best Show Ever, to sold out houses in San Francisco, April 2008 she will be taking the show to the New York Clown Theater Festival. Summer first premiered her solo material along side Cirque Du Soleil all-stars John Gilkey and Your New Best Friends at the Climate Theater in November and December of 2007 and performed original works with John Gilkey at The Marsh, SF in June, 2007. Summer Shapiro starred along side April Wagner in Angry Gods and Lost Marbles, a trapeze clown play directed by Paoli Lacy, showing at the Magic Theater, Oct. 2007. She was one of the core company performers in The Medea Project: Theatre For Incarcerated Women, My Life In The Concrete Jungle, directed by Rhodessa Jones inside County Jail #8 and performing at the Lorraine Hansbury Theatre in San Francisco, October 2006. Concurrently, she understudied Ariel/Miranda in San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s The Tempest, directed by Ken Kelleher. She has performed original solo work at Tell It On Tuesday, Julia Morgan Center For The Arts. Played the Clown in The Bartered Bride, directed by Christopher Walker, San Francisco Legion of Honor & The Napa Valley Opera House. Junebug (clown) in The Mums circus, directed by Roy Johns at the Golden Eagle Awards, Los Angeles. Assunta in The Rose Tattoo, directed by Mel Shapiro. Completed training at The Clown Conservatory June 2006. Graduated from UCLA’s The School of Theatre June 2005. And studied drama at The Samuel Beckett Center in Dublin, Ireland 2003/2004.

April Wagner resides in Hawaii where she has performed with the Waikiki Acrobatics Troop and the Cherry Blossom Cabaret.  Most recently she and Summer performed the premiere of PANTS! at the Climate Theater in San Francisco.  She previously performed with Summer Shapiro as a suicidal clown in a staged reading of Paoli Lacy’s Angry Gods and Lost Marbles at the Magic Theater as well as in a full version of the show at the 2007 WOW Festival.  Additionally, she has performed as a clown with the New Pickle Circus, Theater Artaud, the Dance Palace, the Palace of Fine Arts, Circus for Arts in the Schools, and the traveling clown show Increible!   April co-wrote and starred in her thesis production Meta-Interpretations that performed at the Orlando Fringe Festival and G-Wiz, a children’s science museum. She is a graduate of New College of Florida, and is a 2005 graduate of the San Francisco Circus Center Clown Conservatory.

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