Whitney Players was started in 2000 when four women began a company that would allow children to get more educated in the theater world. These three women were Cindy Simell-Devoe, Joan Christensen, Jennifer Clapp, and Sarah Vaughn. When their business first started, they were only releasing an average of a show a year, and in these shows, both children and adults worked together which was beneficial for the children, because of how they learned from older generations. The scheduling of the shows later expanded to three shows a year, where they were separated by an all-ages show in the summer, where the oldest actor is now 92 years of age, and the youngest that has ever participated was 4 months old. Their latest addition in earlier years was a summer camp, and this led them to finally have three shows a year. The beauty of this organization is that all ages can work together, which makes everybody learn something different from each other, and in the world of theater, that is often very useful.
Whitney Players has thousands of participants that work with them, and Jay, who lives in Hamden and has been working for Whitenye Players for 12 years claims that it is a good experience for all ages. Jay has daughters that contributed to the plays as well and so far he claims that they enjoyed this experience.
Whitney players seem to be for everybody who loves theater, whether they have experience or not they will always be welcome. With Jay’s example, we can see that even parents and their children can participate together! “When children work with older people, they understand that going big is best. This causes the little ones to impress the teens, the teens to embrace the college kids and the college kids want to, later on, impress the older generations” An environment in which everybody wants to learn from each other is what Whitney Players offers, and that is hard to find.
Big shows are coming up in the future for Whitney Players, all spread throughout the next five years. There are some shows that they wanted to do but unfortunately, covid did not allow them to happen, and this caused everything to go online, but the heart of Whitney Players remained! We were able to offer online classes and online shows. A cabaret was held at the time, and food was delivered to all houses. Even during covid Whitney Players was able to work with all participants in allowing them to get the most possible out of their experiences. The community loves Whitney Players because of how they can shape the community, their work is amazing and the key to it is that everybody has the chance to enjoy it.
Interested in watching one of their shows? Whitney Players have a number of shows playing this summer. The troop is putting on a production of Into the Woods Jr. on July 16th at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Hamden Middle School. They are also performing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on August 10-13 at Hamden Highschool. Their Wednesday through Friday shows starts at 7:30 p.m. and their Saturday show at 2 p.m.
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