Spotlight: It Takes Two

By Nick Reichert
| 11:00 p.m. January 27, 2015

Players Theatre directing pair Bob Trisolini and Pamela Wiley plan their upcoming production of the musical "Violet."

Arts + Culture

When Bob Trisolini and Pamela Wiley walked out of the American Airlines Theatre last summer in New York City, the pair was creatively conflicted. The two were scheduled to direct a local production of “Violet,” the new and acclaimed dramatic musical produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, at the Players Theatre.

But after seeing Broadway’s interpretation, the obstacles of transferring the show to the community theater stage began to swirl in the duo’s brains. Nonetheless, the longtime theater artists were excited to share the story of a young North Carolina woman’s bus ride odyssey across America looking for physical and emotional redemption with the Sarasota audience.

“The reason I’m so happy to be part of this particular musical is that I’ve always had a theory that not enough time is spent on the development of characters in musical theater,” says Wiley. “So that’s my biggest job in this production because the characters have to be real in this show or it won’t work.”

Trisolini and Wiley absorbed the raw materials of the musical’s inspiring story and music and reformatted them for a more formalized and traditional musical approach. Unlike on Broadway, for example, the orchestra is in the pit, apart from the action on stage.

In another community theater adaptation, the bus Violet takes from North Carolina to Oklahoma is a collapsible set piece that can be rearranged so the seats and risers on the bus transform into stands for a gospel choir. And either far side of the proscenium stage will be used to represent different points in Violet’s past in her rustic Appalachian home. Behind all this on stage will be a rear projector displaying the backgrounds of where Violet is on her journey, along with dates and place names.

“We loved the music and we loved the script, but we did not like the staging at all,” says Trisolini. “It was way too abstract for us. All the materials were there, but what bothered us and what we changed for this production is that the orchestra was on stage.”

Trisolini and Wiley were both born in New Jersey: Jersey City and Union, respectively. It was in the Garden State that they each found and cultivated their love of stage and performance. Trisolini took a more corporate route into the theatrical world by directing and operating a business theater agency that took Broadway shows and talent and incorporate them into businesses’ ad campaigns and product lines.

Wiley fell in love with the stage when she was 5 years old; her parents took her to a play version of “Peter Pan.” Wiley spent her life as a performer on stage in theater, television and film in New York City and in later years behind the scenes at entertainment companies and networks in Los Angeles.

The pair both ended up retiring in Sarasota but still needed to quench their thirst for theater and performance. That led them to the Players Theatre, where the two met. Since 2005 they have organized the theater’s popular philanthropic event “Got a Minute?” an hour of 60-second-long plays to raise money for cancer research and awareness for the Moffitt Cancer Center Foundation in Tampa.

Artistic Director Jeffery Kin has worked with the two on “Got a Minute?” and believed that together they had the artistic expertise to lead their own main stage production.

Trisolini and Wiley’s vision is for the audience to stay with Violet on her transformational journey without getting lost. Each moment in time has its own space on the stage.

“The other important issue in this play is that it takes place in 1964 right after the passage of the Civil Rights Act,” says Wiley, “so everyone is on equal footing on the bus and not everyone has gotten used to racial equality.”

To tackle this emotionally complex material that takes place over various times and locations, the two split responsibilities and play to their strengths. Trisolini, the experienced choreographer, is establishing the blocking and movement while Wiley, the lifelong actress, works with the ensemble’s diction, character development and general performance.

“We each have our own expertise and it’s blending so well,” says Trisolini. “We’ve worked together before but not to this depth, and we’re just enjoying the experience because we each have something to add to the pot.”