Troupe Of Friends Information

Troupe of Friends was founded in 2006, the result of constant threats of "we oughta do Shakespeare" between numerous, well, a few, well, Joe Penczak, and other McKinley School parents who had participated in countless McKinley Kapers throughout the years. Ken Bigelow challenged Joe with the daring statement, "If you do it, I'm in." And so began a long and fruitful relationship with Messers Bigelow and Penczak. Our first production in the Summer of 2006 was Shakespeare's "The Comedy Of Errors". The show was performed on the baseball diamond at Memorial Pool field. Using the setting as a guide, Mr. Penczak directed a cast of Westfield thespians who donned various baseball costumes representative of their characters. Ken and Joe played the Antipholus twins, dressed in Mets uniforms; while the Dromio twins, played by Sara Hedgepeth and Julie Fetter (dressed as Yankees), were equally adept at helping make our first "game" a home run. The following year, Ken and Joe played the lovable tramps in Samuel Beckett's tragi-comic masterpiece, "Waiting For Godot. Ken's son Daniel was roped into playing the boy, while Charlie Mulrooney as Lucky and Fred Cruz as Pozzo rounded out the cast.