Wilton Players Work to Find Rehearsal Time

WILTON, Conn. – Getting 21 freshmen, sophomores and juniors together to rehearse for the “not senior play” is something Wilton High School theater teacher Meredith Walker has been trying to do since the cast was chosen in late November.

Midterms, sports, lab reports and other extracurricular activities cut into rehearsal time. 

“In Wilton kids like to do a lot of things,” Walker said.

Now, they’re in the last week of rehearsals for the play “Gooney Bird Greene,” by Kent R. Brown. It's based on the children’s book of the same name by Lois Lowry. It’s a story about a class of elementary schoolers who have a new student in class, Gooney Bird Greene - played by freshman Caitlin Witty - who only tells stories that are “absolutely true”.

For Witty, there is only theatre. All of her extracurricular activities involve acting. She performs in a traveling acting troupe called "The New Kids," an anti-bullying theatre campaign. Acting is all she’s wanted to do since she started acting in the 4th grade, she said. .

But that’s rare for this cast. Witty said that of the 21 cast members only “two or three of them are solely theater.”

“I think the whole cast is really committed to the play,” she said.

The play isn’t the only thing sophomore  stag manager Cressida Richards has going on. She’s a member of the poetry society, the school’s literature magazine and "Peervention," a school support group.

Finding time to devote to the play can be difficult, even for her, Richards said. 

“It’s a challenge,” she said, “because the freshman are still arranging their schedules.”

Performances are on Jan. 26 and 27 in the High School Little Theatre at 7:30 p.m., and Jan. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Wilton Library.

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