Professor
trapanis@wcsu.edu

[Acting/Directing/Playmaking with Children/Devised Theatre Workshop/Theatre History]

MFA University of Southern California.  Sal is a director, writer and composer whose work has been seen at many New York, regional and international venues including the Minetta Lane (Raft of the Medusa), Lucile Lortel, Circle Rep, Westside Theatre, Circle in the Square, Kaufman Theatre, Irish Arts Center, Merkin Concert Hall, La Mama ETC, Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, Hudson Guild, 52nd St. Project, INTAR, EST, New Dramatists, the John Drew Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, the Powerhouse (LA), the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (Associate Artistic Director), Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and the Holland Festival.

He is the co-author (with Gerritt van der Meer) and composer of FOOD – A Sixteen Course Musical, which was performed at the Westbank Café before traveling to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  He wrote the text for …concerning vices circumstances and situations, a collaboration with choreographer Donald Byrd and painter Eric Fischl at La Mama. His directorial work on Playing Myself a collaboration with pianist Anthony de Mare and videographer Anney Bonney, was performed at HERE and subsequently at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and the Klaaver International Piano Festival in Talinn, Estonia. He received a Lower Manhattan Cultural Center grant to stage Scott Wren’s play Sudden Death (originally performed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival) on a golf course, where one hole of golf is played for the fate of the world.

He adapted and directed ENEMY:  Project Ibsen, a multi-media adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which was broadcast live on the internet before traveling to Edinburgh.  He has adapted and composed original music for Antigone’s Last Dance, Macbeth 2000-A Multi-Media Rock Opera, A Trip to the Farm (an original children’s interactive musical), Twelfth Night – The 1960’s San Francisco Psychedelic Musical, Romeo and Juliet – A Rock & Roll Love Story and The Tempest – A Musical Enchantment, and Lysistrata: The Disco Vaudeville Rock and Roll Musical.  All have been performed to outstanding critical notice at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Twelfth Night was also performed in Guayaquil, Ecuador as part of a cultural exchange project co-sponsored by the U.S.Consulate and Teatro Centro.

Directing credits at WestConn also include The Green Bird, Spring Awakening, Three Sisters, The Who’s Tommy, A Flea In Her Ear, Suburbia, The Front Page, Hay Fever, Hot L Baltimore, Ways and Means, The Distance From Here, Fiddler on the Roof and The Threepenny Opera.

He has studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama (CSU-AAUP Grant), voice with Patsy Rodenberg and Kristen Linklater, Forum Theatre with Agosto Boal, Viewpoints with Mary Overlie, theatre architecture with Guy Le-Cat and Sanskrit drama with Panikkar.  He has trained in mime (Le Coq Technique), modern dance (Graham) and stage combat.

He has recently completed a musical re-working of the Orpheus myth entitled Orpheus – Journey to Light and the first part of the Oresteia, an updated musical version of the Greek trilogy.  As an actor, he has appeared on stage, film and TV.  Most recent credits include Law & Order and One Life to Live.  Member of Circle East Theatre Company, the Greylock Project, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Actors Equity, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Schmooze Brothers.