"It's very exciting--and hilarious. Hopefully. When we get an audience in there we will see!" laughs Equity actor Nathan Shelton. "It's hilarious without an audience," Rick Dines assures him. Dines is Springfield Contemporary Theatre's Managing Artistic Director, and he is directing Nathan in the third part of the 2016 SCT Solo Play Festival at Center Stage in Wilhoit Plaza: Joe Mantello's stage adaptation of the humorous essay by David Sedaris, The Santaland Diaries. Sedaris first read the essay on NPR's Morning Edition in 1992, and his reading became a holiday tradition. (You can hear Sedaris's original reading at this link: He did a much longer version on PRI's This American Life in 1996, the year Mantello created his one-man, one-act stage version. As Rick Dines says, "NPR made David Sedaris." Adds Nathan Shelton, "When I first got the role, I listened to Sedaris read it. His voice, and the way that he delivers it--the way he writes--it's so funny." After debuting off-Broadway,
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