years, teaching drama in various school systems and directing over 75 major musicals and
plays with high school students, college students, elementary school students, and adults.
They are the founders of the highly successful Youth CONNection Players, a community
theatre group for high school and college students and the Youth CONNection Summer
Theatre Camp for elementary school students. They have been recognized for their
expertise in theatre and for their service to their community.
In 1983, after directing the Shelton High School Drama Club for almost a decade, the couple
decided to start a community theatre group for high school and college students. With the
help of former Shelton Mayor Eugene Hope, the Scarpas were granted permission to use
the then vacant Huntington School, where they mounted the Youth CONNection’s first
production, West Side Story, which played to nine sell-out audiences.
Shelton High School’s Percy Kingsley Auditorium, where they have resided ever since. Each summer,
the group has performed such musicals as Annie, Man of La Mancha, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on
the Roof, Hello Dolly, The Music Man, The King and I, Oklahoma!, Brigadoon, South Pacific, Meet Me in
St. Louis, Godspell, Anything Goes, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Children of Eden,
and Les Miserables, to name a few.
Members of the Youth CONNection have given benefit performances for civic organizations and worthy
causes throughout the state, including Juvenile Diabetes, the American Cancer Society, Hospice, the
Ronald McDonald House, and AIDS Project New Haven.
from the Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Millennium Award, given by the City of Shelton.
Francesca Scarpa has been recognized by the American Committee on Italian Migration. Gary Scarpa
has been recognized by Long Wharf Theatre as being an outstanding theatre educator as well as the
Shelton Jaycees who named him Educator of the Year in 1989.
Besides directing the Youth CONNection, the couple has directed productions for the Shelton High
School Drama Club, the Orange Players, the Amity High School Drama Club, the Sacred Heart Academy
Drama Club, the Shubert Theatre Summer Academy for the Performing Arts, Quinnipiac University, and
the Connecticut Experimental Theatre.
in Shelton -- a bookstore, coffee shop, intimate theatre, and theatre education studio.
