Westport to Present British Comedy Symposium, July 15

Westport Country Playhouse will present a Sunday Symposium on "British Comedy Stylings," following the July 15, 3 p.m. matinee performance of Relatively Speaking, a comedy by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. 

Guest speakers will be Paul Rudd, associate director and faculty member of the graduate theatre department at The New School in New York City, and Dr. Martha S. LoMonaco, professor of theatre, Fairfield University.

The Playhouse Sunday Symposium program, free and open to the public, provides the audience with guest speakers' in-depth insights and observations about the production followed by an interactive dialogue.  Debra Baron, Westport Country Playhouse education director, will moderate the Sunday Symposium.

"The Sunday Symposium will enhance the audience's experience in fully appreciating the play," said Tazewell Thompson, Westport Country Playhouse artistic director. "It is open to all, including those who attend a performance of Relatively Speaking at another time." 

Paul Rudd graduated from Fairfield University in 1962 and went into the theatre in 1968 as a spear-carrier for Joe Papp in Shakespeare in the Park in "Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2."  He spent 18 years in New York and elsewhere (Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, among others) playing Romeo, Henry V, Berowne, Slender, Oberon, Wall, and others.  He had begun directing plays in 1985 when he became the parent-at-home for the first of three children.  He started teaching workshops in local public schools while his kids were in school.  He is currently associate director and faculty member of the graduate theatre department at The New School in New York City.

Dr. LoMonaco, professor of theatre at Fairfield University, is the author of two books, Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon, a history of the Straw Hat Circuit and how American leisure was shaped in the early twentieth century; and Every Week a Broadway Revue, a look at the famous Tamiment Playhouse in Pennsylvania's Poconos Mountains from 1921 through 1960, where many of the most talented comedy performers and writers got their professional start, including Imogene Coca, Danny Kaye, Carol Burnett, Dick Shawn, Neil Simon and Woody Allen.

Relatively Speaking, directed by John Tillinger, is on the stage of Westport Country Playhouse July 12 through 28.  "Set in London and the English countryside, the comedy begins when an unidentified pair of slippers are found under a bed leading to a series of hilarious misunderstandings, mistaken identities and alibis between two young lovers and a middle-aged married couple until no one is certain who's in love with whom. Cast members are Geneva Carr as Ginny, Cecilia Hart as Sheila, James Waterston as Greg and Paxton Whitehead as Philip," state Westport notes.

Visit www.westportplayhouse.org for tickets and more information.

Photo - Alan Ayckbourn

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