A 'Wonderful Life' in Southampton

Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center will present 10 performances of “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” starting tomorrow at 7 p.m. and continuing through Thanksgiving weekend.

Inspired by Frank Capra’s classic holiday film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Joe Landry, a Connecticut playwright, scaled it down for budgetary reasons when developing it for the stage. It premiered in 1996 at the Stamford Center for the Arts and is now performed dozens of times a year around the country.

While the play’s dialogue is taken almost verbatim from the film, the story is told entirely by the actors’ vocal skills, sound effects, props, and costumes, placing the audience at a radio station during a live broadcast in the 1940s.

Michael Disher will direct a cast of 15 or more. Other show times are Saturday at 2, 5 ,and 7 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 5, Friday, Nov. 27, at 5 and 7, and Nov. 29 at 2 and 5. Tickets are $20, $10 for students under 21.

Center Stage will also hold open auditions for its next production, Del Shores’s “Sordid Lives,” on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 at 6 p.m. at the cultural center. Readings will be from the script, and latecomers will be seen at the discretion of the directors, Joan Lyons and Mr. Disher. Performances will happen over three weekends in January.