Monthly Archives: November 2009

Tell Me A Story

Posted on November 14, 2009 | 1 comment

On a list of risky activities, story-telling ranks well below sky-diving, cliff-jumping and driving anywhere in Westport.

Fairfield Theater CompanyBut — at least at an event like the Fairfield Theater Company’s “Off the Wall Community Storytelling” — there’s an element of risk.  And it involves the audience as well as the storyteller.

The monthly events — held at the company’s Stage One, and co-created by Westporter Ina Chadwick — are part of a new national interest in storytelling.

Community storytelling draws strangers together through a shared experience.  It happens in a way far more spontaneous and intimate than a stage performance.

Last month’s “Off the Wall Community Storytelling” included 6 storytellers from Westport, Weston, Fairfield, Norwalk and Bridgeport.  Some were well known, like actor Keir Dullea.  Others were complete unknowns.  All had stories to tell.

Storytellers and organizers pose at October's event. (Photo by Suzanne Sheridan)

Storytellers and organizers pose at October's event. (Photo by Suzanne Sheridan)

After intermission, names were pulled out of a hat.  Three audience members told improv stories.  One was particularly spontaneous, genuine and moving.

What’s the risk?  According to Emily Hamilton Laux, a Westporter who was at last month’s event:  “Telling a personal story to an audience who may be ‘judging’ you is not something often done outside of 12-step programs and group therapy.

“And listening to that story — which may have an awkward or nervous moment, or feel like it is dragging — and trying to get something from it means the audience must take the risk of actively listening, while not being quick to judge.”

Emily wished her children had joined her.  “Afterwards, there was no way I could convey to them what happened in that room,” she said.  “You had to be there.  This is definitely multi-generational.”

(The next “Off the Wall Community Storytelling” event is set for November 17, at 7:30 p.m. Click here for ticket information.)

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Posted in Entertainment, Organizations

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The Show Must Go On

Posted on November 13, 2009 | 4 comments

When a director can’t direct a show, the associate director usually steps in.

For Staples Players director David Roth tonight, that was impossible.  Associate director Kerry Long is his wife — and she was giving birth to their 1st child.

Oh, yeah — this was opening night for the Players’ production of “Guys and Dolls.”

Players president Caley Beretta stepped into the breach.  All day long, she rallied the cast and crew.  They took care of the zillions of last-minute details that needed to be done.  They pulled together, as a true company should.  When the curtain rose, Caley was directing.

And — 17 minutes after the opening notes of the Overture began — Kerry gave birth.

Lucy Roth is a true drama queen.  In her 1st minutes on earth, she upstaged her very theatrical parents.

Staples Players' "Guys and Dolls"

Dan Shure, Max Stampa-Brown and Chris Nicoletti: 3 stars of the well-directed "Guys and Dolls." (Photo by associate director, photographer and new mother Kerry Long)

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Posted in Arts, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Coyote Brings Life To Downtown

Posted on November 13, 2009 | 1 comment

S-l-o-w-l-y but surely, life returns to downtown.

Tonight, the Community Arts Center opens on 42 Main Street.  We hope the execution has more pizzazz than the name.  (Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the Westport Arts Center.  Or the Fairfield Community Theater.)

Al Coyote Weiner

Al "Coyote" Weiner

The new Center — in the funky, 2nd-floor space of the Art Up gallery — hosts a reception (7-10 p.m.) honoring avant-garde painter and recording artist Al “Coyote” Weiner.  Performances by local musicians, and “a number of media activities,” follow.

Already I’m impressed.  “Coyote” is not your basic Westport nickname.  He’ll display more than 30 new paintings, and play compositions from his latest album.  This could be very avant-garde.

Food and beverages will be provided by Oscar’s, Bobby Q’s, “and other local eateries.”

The Center, a press release says, will showcase its new Interactive Multi-Media Lab, featuring a “surround sound lock-to-picture recording studio and High Definition (HD) video-editing suite.  The Lab will also sponsore innovative workshops on electronic music recording and editing.

The press advisory continues:  “Diverse workshops will also be offered, which can be recorded and published on the web.  Photography & composition, music, singing, acting, culinary activities, psychology, politics, current events, and various crafts are some of the offerings of the Center.  Clubs will also be formed, which could use the premises fo their meetings.”

Those are verbatim quotes, most of which I don’t understand.  Yet despite sounding vague and ethereal, in a Bolinas sort of way, the Cool Potential is high.

Particularly because The Community Arts Center is smack in the middle of downtown.  And there is actually something going on there at night.

Let’s turn out in force, to howl for Coyote.

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Posted in Arts, Downtown

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The Mitchells Family Grows

Posted on November 12, 2009 | Comments Off on The Mitchells Family Grows

The news that Mitchells of Westport is expanding to the West Coast is in some ways surprising.  In others, it is business as usual.

Mitchells — which grew from a tiny mom-and-pop men’s store to an enormous mom-and-pop-and-the-kids men’s and women’s store, then acquired 2 similar family-owned clothiers — is ready to add San Francisco-based Wilkes Bashford.

The deal is contingent on a competitive bid process.   The stores in Union Square and Palo Alto are in bankruptcy.

Jack and Bill Mitchell

Jack and Bill Mitchell -- the 2nd generation

While cross-country expansion may raise eyebrows, the acquisition seems a perfect fit.  Wilkes Bashford — the 76-year-old founder of the chain that bears his name — will still be part of the business, news reports say.

That’s the Mitchells way.  Ed and Norma Mitchell — who, when they opened their 1st store in 1958, did their own tailoring and coffee-making — have passed the family-store gene on to their offspring, in a big, important way.

Their sons Jack and Bill eventually took over, helping the store expand and diversify. 

Jack’s 4 sons, and Bill’s 3 — Ed and Norma did not, apparently, pass along the female gene — have now taken over, in a variety of roles.  Under the 3rd generation’s direction, Mitchells now operates Richards of Greenwich, and Marshs of Huntington, NY.

Now the 4th generation is poised to make its mark.  Jack’s teenage grandchildren are being brought in to the family council — regular meetings of the entire clan.  In Mitchell tradition, they will work in the industry — in non-Mitchells stores — before being brought formally in to the company.

Up to 90 percent of family-owned businesses fail to make it to the 3rd generation.  The emergence of a 4th bodes well for Mitchells, Richards, Marshs — and, hopefully soon, Wilkes Bashford.

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Posted in Local business

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Solving The T-1 Mystery

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 3 comments

T1

“06880” reader Luisa Francoeur was puzzled recently, when dozens of white bags saying “T-1, November 5” sprouted in her Old Hill neighborhood.

She wondered if “06880” knew what was up.  We not only did not know; we had never heard of the bags before.

Luisa took matters into her own hands.  Somehow, she learned that November 5 was the 2nd annual “T-1 Luminary Enlightenment” event, to raise awareness of type 1/juvenile diabetes.  Across the country, participants lit luminaries to raise awareness of, and shine light on — get it? — the need to find a cure for this devastating disease.

You learn something new every day.  I learned something about luminaries, and type 1/juvenile diabetes.

But here’s the reason this is a great “06880” story:  The T-1 Enlightenment website instructs everyone, everywhere, to take pictures of their luminaries, and send them to a Westport post office box.

Westport:  a world leader in curing juvenile diabetes.  Is this an amazing town or what?

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Posted in Totally random

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Celebrating 60 Years Of Liberty

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 1 comment

In 1950 Hank and Julie Mayer opened an Army & Navy store on Bridgeport’s East Side.  Just 5 years after the end of  World War II, there was quite a market for surplus military equipment.

blog - Liberty Army NavySixty years later, the Mayers’ daughters — Eve Rothbard and Iris Rose — own and operate their parents’ successor, Liberty Army & Navy in Westport and Norwalk.  Westport might not be considered fertile ground for such an enterprise.  But Liberty Army & Navy has done something few retailers think about, let alone pull off.  They’ve changed with the times, while never straying far from their roots.

The Mayers’ 1st Westport location, on the Post Road across from the Shell station, was in a small strip mall next to a Kentucky  Fried Chicken (today it’s Top Drawer).

Back then — 1972 — “people wore a lot of jeans,” Eve recalls. “We were a basic, good-value store, with a focus on customer service.”

It was a winning formula.  Seven years later the store moved to larger quarters:  its present site a few hundred yards west.  Hank retired in 1992, and Eve and Iris took over.

Today, they say, jeans are back.  Levi’s are huge, thanks to their tapered look.

At the same time, Eve says, “We’ve evolved.  We’ve got upscale brands:  Under Armour, Smartwool, Teva and Jockey.”

Over the years, Builders Beyond Borders became a big customers.  Twice a year hundreds of teenagers head to Liberty Army & Navy for clothes, hiking boots and work gloves, before community service in Central and South America.

Liberty Army & Navy also provides uniforms and embroidery to utility companies, landscapers and other businesses.

But the core of the store is the same as always:  good products at good value.

Modern technology, like the internet, has not hurt them, Eve says.  “People want to get their hands on a product.  They come here, and they really see what they’re getting.”

As Westport has changed, though, customers have shifted.

“Westport is younger,” Eve notes.  “We always had a base of older people, because they understood the ‘Army Navy’ concept.  Now it’s a very small part.”

“Westporters know we’re not just camouflage,” Iris says.  “We carry name brands.”

The owners and their staff — many of whom have worked there for years — now see 3rd-generation customers.  Others, who moved away,  return when they can.  One couple stops in twice a year, on trips between their homes in Florida and Cape Cod.  They say Liberty Army & Navy is the only place to buy jeans.

Another customer recently told Eve and Iris:  “Thank god you’re still here.”

“We’re so grateful to our loyal customers, who have supported us throughout the years,” Iris says.  “And we’re always working on getting new ones.”

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Posted in Local business

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Jerry Davidoff’s Concern

Posted on November 10, 2009 | 13 comments

It’s ancient history to many Westporters, but in 1970 our town engaged in an ugly battle over a plan to bus a few Bridgeport students to Westport.

The proposal — Project Concern — was passed by the Board of Education.  Enraged citizens initiated a recall petition against the board chairman, Joan Schine. 

An enormous crowd packed a hearing in the Staples auditorium.  When Westport Education Association president Dick Leonard announced that his executive board had voted to endorse Project Concern, and oppose the recall effort, a man standing in the front leaped to his feet. 

That started a standing ovation — in part of the room.  The other part booed.

Jerry and Denny Davidoff

Jerry Davidoff and his wife, Denny (Photo courtesy of http://www.uua.org)

The man was Jerry Davidoff.  He died Saturday at 83.  A 40-year resident of Westport, he served for nearly a decade on the Board of Ed — 2 as chairman — and 4 more on the RTM.

“Jerry was willing to stick his neck out, and stand up for what was right,” Leonard recalled this morning.  “He was a liberal thinker, and a very constructive influence on Westport life for many years.”

Jerry Davidoff accomplished much in his life of service to Westport.  In addition to politics, he earned renown as a champion of civil liberties, and a national lay leader in the Unitarian Universalist church.

But Dick Leonard will always remember Jerry Davidoff for the moment he rose to his feet, in a moment of passion and power, and led a standing ovation for a cause he believed was right.

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Posted in Looking back, People

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‘Talk This Way’

Posted on November 10, 2009 | 1 comment

After more than 20 years of reading The New Yorker, I still never know what I’m going to find.

Yesterday I found a Westporter I never heard of.

Brad Pitt

Tim Monich helped Missouri native Brad Pitt speak like Tennessee hillbilly Aldo Raine in "Inglourious Basterds"

“Talk This Way,” by Alex Wilkinson, profiles Tim Monich.  He’s got 1 of those fascinating jobs you never think about, or even know exist:  He teaches actors to talk.

Talk, that is, the right way for whatever role comes their way.

The New Yorker says:

Tim Monich taught Brad Pitt to talk as if he were from somewhere deep in the mountains of Tennessee.  He taught Matt Damon to speak as if he were South African, and Hilary Swank to speak like Amelia Earhart, who was from Kansas but had gone to boarding school near Philadelphia….

In early September, having nearly finished teaching Gerard Butler, who is Scottish, to speak as if he were from New York, for “The Bounty,” Monich began teaching Shia LaBeouf, who is from Southern California, to speak as if he’d grown up on Long Island, for “Wall Street.”

Tim has helped Donald Sutherland — a Canadian — speak like a South African, an Englishman, a wealthy New Yorker, a Kansan, a Georgian, an Oregonian, a North Carolinian, a Mississippian, a Michgander, a Minnesotan, and a member of the Polish politburo.

Sutherland said:  “He’s not a mechanic, and he doesn’t impose.  He comes in from underneath and supports your instincts; he doesn’t try to define them.  There are many people who do what he does, and by and large they offer constraints.  He offers liberation.”

His Westport home includes 6,000 recordings — “almost surely the largest private one of its kind” — of people talking.  They represent an enormous variety of places, periods and social stations — including tapes of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter and, from 1890, John Wilkes Booth’s brother Edwin reciting Othello.

It’s a fascinating piece.  The New Yorker, as it often does, shines a spotlight on someone who would never wander into it himself.

The fact that Tim Monich — despite living in our arts-oriented town — has managed to stay out of our own spotlight for all these years, makes The New Yorker story all the more special.

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Posted in Arts, People

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In Harms Way

Posted on November 9, 2009 | 1 comment
HarmsWay

Harms Way, in action

Harms Way was the winning band in Friday night’s Please Don’t Stop the Music Middle School Night, at Toquet Hall.

They beat out several local bands — and helped raise nearly $3,000 for PeaceWorks, the prevention education project of the Domestic Violence Crisis Center.

We hear a lot about the great things Staples students do.

Middle school — not so much.

It’s good to know our community pump is well primed.

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Posted in Entertainment, Teenagers

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The Guys And Gals Behind ‘Guys And Dolls’

Posted on November 9, 2009 | 6 comments

When the curtain rises Friday on the Staples Players production of “Guys and Dolls,” the audience will gasp at the intricate set.  The high school stage will transform into New York City, with all its grit and glamour.

Soon, however, attention will be riveted on the actors.  Theatergoers will thrill to the music, choreography and staging, marveling that a high school troupe can put its traditionally professional mark on such a classic show.

As they leave the auditorium, a few folks will comment on the set and the costumes.  One or 2 may mention the lighting.  No one will talk about the intricate ballet that went on in the workrooms for months — and backstage for 2 hours — to make the show a success.

That’s the way it always is with theater.  The tech crew toils in obscurity.  (At Staples, they’re traditionally invited onstage for a bow at the final performance.)

But, as always, without tech there would be no show.

“The tech people are incredibly hard-working,” says Caley Beretta, a senior who serves as Players president and assistant director for “Guys and Dolls.”  “The entire cast was here from 2:30 to 7 last week — but tech was here from 2:30 to 10.  And it wasn’t even Hell Week.”

Even the actors don’t realize the contributions of tech.  “The cast is gone, so they don’t see everything gets done,” Caley notes.

Josh Tucker, Staples Players

Josh Tucker, Staples Players VP for tech, works just as hard backstage as the crew members he supervises. (Photo by Kerry Long)

To stress the importance of tech to a show, anyone wishing to audition for the next Staples show must contribute at least 25 hours behind the scenes.  “We want to create well-rounded theater people,” Caley explains.

Those tech hours are critical to a show like “Guys and Dolls.”  Three different drops come down, so “New York” completely surrounds every scene.

Though adult professionals serve as supervisors — David Seltzer is tech director, Reid Thompson is scenic designer, and Lynn Muniz (“Hair”) is set painter — students perform the bulk of the work.  For this show, for example, they created 4 different flats — some 20 feet tall — on the sides of the stage.  The flats feature complex perspectives, and Players began working on them in early September.

Josh Tucker — Players vice president of tech — handles intricate details.  He’s got a run crew that moves sets constantly; 4 spot operators; a fly operator coordinating all drops, and side managers who communicate, via headsets, with Elana Machlis, the stage manager.

Then there’s props, costumes and sound.  Besides sound effects, Players has 23 mikes, some of which switch between ensemble and cast members.

“Backstage is mayhem,” Caley says.

Despite the chaos — not only during the run, but in the long weeks leading up to it — working on tech is fulfilling.  “It’s so creative,” Caley says.  “Seeing the show come to life, from the first models to the actual performance, is incredible.  You can point to something and say, ‘I built that,’ ‘I lit that,’ or ‘I made that happen.'”

(“Guys and Dolls” opens this Friday, Nov. 13, and runs Nov. 14, 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Staples auditorium.  There are additional performances Sunday, Nov. 15 at 2 p.m., and Thursday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m.  Tickets are $15 adults, $10 students and senior citizens, with a special “stimulus price” of $10 adults, $5 students and senior citizens on Nov. 19.  Tickets can be purchased online, at www.staplesplayers.com, or in the Staples main lobby this week from 12:30 to 2 p.m., cash or check only.  Any remaining tickets will be available at the door, 30 minutes before each performance.  For further information, call 203-341-1310.)

Andie Levinson, Staples Players

Andie Levinson, co-senior manager of arts and graphics, paints a set piece. (Photo by Kerry Long)

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Posted in Staples HS, Teenagers

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