Unstaged Adult Acting Registration

Rusty Wilson (he/him) is a freelance theatre artist based in Richmond, VA. Since moving to Richmond in 2005 he has directed a number of critically acclaimed productions including Cadence Theatre’s John, (RTCC Best Director, 2017), Sight Unseen, and In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). Other Richmond directing credits include Firehouse Theatre’s Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (RTCC Best Director, 2011), Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (RTCC Best Director, 2009), and Noah Haidle’s Mr. Marmalade. Rusty also directed Virginia Rep’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and Richmond Triangle Players’ Cloud 9. Prior to moving to Richmond, Rusty spent ten years serving as the Founding Artistic Director for Company of Fools, an award winning theatre company located in Sun Valley, Idaho. Favorite directing credits there include Uncle Vanya, James Joyce’s The Dead, Waiting for Godot, How I Learned to Drive, The Tempest, Death and the Maiden, Buried Child, and Other Desert Cities. Rusty has been a guest director and teacher at various colleges and universities around the country, received a fellowship in directing in 2003, and was featured in the March 2002 issue of American Theatre Magazine. From 2005 to 2022, Rusty served as the Arts Department Chair and Ampersand Director for St. Christopher’s School. He currently serves as an Associate Artist for Cadence.

Denise Simone (she/her) has pursued a life in the professional theatre for the past 40 years as an actor, director, teacher, administrator and consultant. While her work as an actor has informed and fed all other aspects of her life in the theatre, it was her 1996 move to Hailey, Idaho, with the award-winning Company of Fools (COF, of which she was a founding member) that led to the richest and most rewarding chapter (thus far) of her career.  Between 1996 and 2016, Simone served as COF’s Co-Producing Artistic Director and led the Company to becoming one of the pre-eminent arts organizations in Idaho. Some of her favorite acting roles with COF include Barbara in August: Osage County, Veronica in God of Carnage, Masha in Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Margie in Good People, Polly in Other Dessert Cities, the one-woman shows The Syringa Tree and Shirley Valentine, May in Fool for Love starring Bruce Willis and Roberta in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. She has also appeared in VaRep’s POTUS, Boise Contemporary Theatre’s productions of The Roommate, The Clean House and Slow. Directing credits include Cry It Out, Proof; Constellations; Almost, Maine; Doubt; Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Distracted; Collected Stories; The Laramie Project; and The Belle of Amherst.  Simone has taught theatre and creative writing in Virginia and Idaho and helped create and implement COF’s innovative in-school Stages of Wonder program. Simone served as a commissioner for the Idaho Commission on the Arts for ten years and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently an advisory board member for the Sun Valley Playwrights Residency as well as a member of Actors’ Equity Association and Screen Actors’ Guild.  For her work in the theatre Denise was awarded the Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.