Tag Archives: Toquet Hall

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted on July 30, 2011 | 21 comments

A recent post highlighting one former Westporter’s disillusionment with what his former hometown lit a (predictable) fire in the “06880” comments section.

In response, someone who grew up here in the 1960s — then returned to Westport 10 years ago to live — offered these thoughts on positive changes in over the decades.

For example:

Staples.  “What a magnificent facility this is now,” the writer says.  “It reminds me of a modern college complex.  And while going to classes back in the ’60s via outdoor walkways was great on beautiful fall and spring days, it was a pain in the neck in the winter and during downpours.

The fieldhouse and pool, the returnee adds, represent much-improved athletic facilities.  They’re used often, by people of all ages.

The Staples High School of yesteryear looked nothing like this.

Levitt Pavilion.  “We had nothing like this growing up.  A true cultural and entertainment jewel.”

Toquet Hall.  “There was no teen center when we grew up,” the “06880” reader notes.

Senior Center.  “Was there anything like this back in the day?”  No way.

Library.  The writer says there is “absolutely no comparison between the old cramped Post Road building and the current location.  Besides the far greater offering of books and periodicals, the present-day library is much more of a community center in so many ways.  The hours are also much more extensive now.”

The Library looks a lot different from its previous, cramped quarters.

Speaking of hours, stores are open far longer than in the past.  This is a function of the repeal of Connecticut’s blue laws, but it’s a change for the better, the reader says.

Restaurants offer a “much greater choice today (and I’m sure most people would add, a great choice of high quality).”

Longshore, including the building housing the tennis pro shop, lockers and food concession, is “a beautifully designed gateway to that section of the club, far superior to the prior run-down building.”  Much of the rest of Longshore — the pool, inn, golf course and marina — is also vastly improved.

The person who responded served up this challenge:  “If you’ve got a Westport connection going back at least 20 years, what else is better now?”

I’ll start it off:  We never had local blogs 🙂

To add your own thoughts, click the “Comments” link.

21 Comments

Posted in Entertainment, Library, Local business, Longshore, Looking back, Restaurants, Staples HS

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Once On This Island

Posted on March 14, 2011 | Comments Off on Once On This Island

Leave it to Staples Players to produce “Romeo and Juliet” — with a Caribbean twist.

“Once on This Island”takes over Toquet Hall this Friday (8 p.m.) and Saturday (5 and 8 p.m.).

It’s an intriguing show — there’s catchy music, great dancing, dynamic characters, amazing costumes, and of course the age-old question:  love or death?

Senior directors Kathryn Durkin and Greg Langstine had to work within the tight confines of Toquet Hall.  It wasn’t easy squeezing a cast of 23 (and an 8-person pit orchestra) on a small stage, then making music and magic happen.

But they did it.  Players always does it.  Check out the sneak peek below:

(Tickets will be sold at Toquet Hall 30 minutes before each show.)

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Posted in Arts, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Hey Champ!

Posted on October 6, 2010 | 41 comments

The 1st place Pete Dougherty ever played a rock concert was Toquet Hall.  It was a Battle of the Bands, back in 2001-ish.

He went on to Princeton.  These days he’s a keyboard player/synethsizist with the indie band Hey Champ! Spin called them “the best discovery of Lollapalooza.”

Their 1st single, “Cold Dust Girl,” was played on the new “90210” series.  Their music was also heard this year during New York Fashion Week shows.

The band — whose influences range from Cheap Trick to Giorgio Morodor — is in Buffalo and Syracuse this week.  Next week they head to Albany and Amherst.

In between, they play Toquet Hall.

Dougherty returns to his roots this Friday (Oct. 8), for an 8 p.m. show.

It’s not quite the Beatles back in Liverpool — but for local fans, it’s close.

(For information on Hey Champ!’s Westport appearance, click here.)

 

Here's Hey Champ! Pete Dougherty is on the left.

 

41 Comments

Posted in Entertainment, People

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Doing “The Dumb Waiter”

Posted on August 12, 2010 | 1 comment

Back in the day, kids looking for something to do would say, “Let’s put on a show!”

They’d make up a few lines, rummage around for props, and a few hours later they’d stage a play.  Out in the barn.

Here’s the 2010 version.

Recent Staples graduate Adam Bangser and current Staples Player Matt Van Gessel decided to create a piece of theater that’s their own — a 2-man show.

Adam’s uncle Tom Shaner — a former Player, and Tisch School graduate — suggested “The Dumb Waiter.”  Harold Pinter’s play — a dark comedy about two hit men who receive strange messages while waiting in a basement to kill someone — is “short, quick and fantastic,” Adam says.

They booked Toquet Hall, for this weekend (Friday and Saturday, August 13-14; doors open at 7:30 p.m.).

They bought plywood at Home Depot.  With help from a carpenter working on Matt’s house, they build a dumbwaiter.

They painted the set, and procured props.

Matt designed posters; he and Adam put them up around town.

The pair did everything themselves (though the dumbwaiter is operated by Max Samuels, a fellow Player just back from the Yale Summer Drama program).

“This really is our own little 2-man production, with as few outside influences as possible,” Adam says.

Last month, Adam appeared in Players’ spectacular production of “Rent.”  “The Dumb Waiter” is as different from “Rent” as possible.

But it’s all in a summer’s work for today’s theatrical teens.

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Posted in Arts, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Rada Raps

Posted on May 22, 2010 | 4 comments

Andrew Medina likes “older” music — R&B and rap.

“Stuff from the ’90s,” he explains.  “You know, Eminem’s old albums.”

When you’re a Staples sophomore, the ’90s are ancient history.

Andrew is better known — on YouTube, anyway — as Rada.  The name comes from his old Coleytown Middle School choir, Camerata.

Rada

“I can somewhat sing,” Rada says.  “But I’m more of a rapper.”

Which is why these days his music consists of writing and rapping.

“I was raised on rap,” Rada reports.  “My parents listened to it, so I was into it from a young age.”

He appreciates rap’s “freedom to say what you want.  You can get anything out of your system.”

Two months ago Rada made his first recording, in a Queens studio.  His 3 remixes include “Bonita Appelbaum,” by A Tribe Called Quest.

“The other stuff isn’t as old,” he says.

Ouch.

The recording process was stressful, Rada notes.  “I had to do it over and over to get it perfect.  There’s all kinds of voiceovers and background stuff.”

Reaction at Staples has been very positive, he says.  Students like it.  And his English teacher, Dan Geraghty, asked Rada to rap for the class.

“I don’t think I have a style — I just capture the beat,” Rada says.  “Maybe I’m like Drake.”

Rada adds:  “I don’t rap about ghetto topics, guns or degrading women.  I was never into that.”

His songs are about “situations I get myself into, being with my friends, being with my girlfriend.”

He tries to erase the stereotype that all rap is negative.  “It can be motivational, inspirational,” he says.

Rada hopes to take his music far, professionally.  He’s starting locally — with a performance June 19 at Toquet Hall.  It will be his 1st show.

“I’m nervous,” he admits.  “But I’m getting lots of support.”

Everyone is invited.

Even rap fans old enough to remember the ’90s.

(Click here for Rada’s YouTube channel.)

4 Comments

Posted in Entertainment, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

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Take A WYFF

Posted on May 5, 2010 | 1 comment

Harvey Weinstein is big (in more ways than one).

And Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Bette Davis, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe are just a few of the boldface names who at one point called Westport home.

But you can spot mega-mogul movie producers and Oscar-winning actors many places besides Westport.

One thing you can’t find anywhere but here is the Westport Youth Film Festival.

Organizers call it “the only youth film festival in the world run for high school students, by high school students.”

And while Hollywood is known for hyperbole, this is Westport.  We’ll take their word for it.

The 7th annual WYFF returns this weekend.  The schedule is remarkable — and what’s even more remarkable is how few Westporters know about it.

This Friday and Saturday (May 7-8), 65 high school student films — chosen from over 200 submissions, around the world — will be shown at Town Hall and Toquet Hall. Prizes will be awarded to 9 of them.

Friday night’s highlights include 8 movies from “Peace It Together,” a Canadian program involving Canadian, Palestinian and Israeli youth — plus Q-and-As.

On Saturday — in addition to the 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. film screenings — there will be musical performances on Main Street, free popcorn and soda at Oscar’s, and t-shirt sales.  At 9 a.m. there’s a bagel breakfast with WYFF organizers and filmmakers.

The films range widely:  politics and current events; music; romance; comedy; self-discovery (hey, they’re teenagers).  At 5 p.m. Saturday Toquet hosts “The Roy Orbison Project,” spotlighting WYFF alumni including Jon Karmen and Jake Andrews of Rubydog fame.

I have no idea what the Roy Orbison Project is, but if it’s half as good as his voice, I’ll be impressed.

Tom Seligson, a Westport-based Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, keynotes Saturday’s 6 p.m. awards ceremony (Toquet).

WYFF is one of those Westport events you shouldn’t miss — though it also may be one you never heard of.

And even if the tagline — “the only youth film festival in the world run for high school students, by high school students” — is not true, this one may be:  “The only youth film festival in the world in a town without an actual movie theater.”

(For the WYFF YouTube trailer, click here.  For a detailed schedule of events, click here.)

1 Comment

Posted in Arts, Downtown, Entertainment, People, Teenagers

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texting & sexting

Posted on March 10, 2010 | 2 comments

interesting meeting last nite @ Toquet:  texting and sexting.  scary stuff.

  • kids text all nite, even b/t midnite & 5 am
  • some kids don’t sleep b/c they worry what other kids are texting about them
  • kids think sexting is ok b/c rappers do it
  • not like old days when parents answered phone & knew who was calling their kids
  • >50% of teens forward texts & sexts  — including entire contact lists
  • 68% of kids say things in texts they wouldn’t say in person
  • sexts spread thru school like wildfire
  • sending sexts can be child porn — even if u send it urself
  • keeping sexts can be child porn — even if its ur gf or bf
  • 20% of teenagers sext

i learned alot. 2 bad werent more ppl there.

2 Comments

Posted in technology, Teenagers

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Telemachus Clay At Toquet

Posted on March 8, 2010 | 8 comments

In the 1964 play “Telemachus Clay,” a young man leaves the East Coast for California.  He needs to find himself.

In real life Jahari Dodd left California 4 years ago, also to find himself.  He ended up in Westport, as an ABC Scholar.

Now he’s directing “Telemachus Clay” — a Staples Players studio production that debuts this weekend at Toquet Hall.

Jahari Dodd

“A young person’s journey spoke to me,” Jahari said of his reaction when Players director David Roth showed him the script.  The colorful cast of characters; the play’s ’60s sensibility; the funky yet linear story; the concept of no set, no real makeup, minimal costumes — all impelled Jahari to stage the show.

Toquet — where people sit in chairs and couches — is a perfect venue for “Telemachus.”  “When you walk in, you know it’s not your average show,” says Jahari.  “It’s like a place where audiences would watch this play in the 1960s.

“All the action goes out to the audience,” Jahari explains.  “The actors are part of the crowd.  Characters run out the back, and come from the fly.  Everyone in the audience should feel a Telemachus-like connection, because all of us should go on a journey to find ourselves.”

As a director, Jahari’s biggest challenge has been to get his actors as loose and fun as the show is.  “It’s hard to pull a spiritual experience out of a high school kid,” he notes.  “But the cast has gone out of their comfort zone.  And I think the audience will feel as free and loose as the cast.”

Glenn Leo and Rachel Samuels rehearse. (Photo by Jillian Bosshardt)

Glenn Leo, as Telemachus, “embodies the young man who’s searching, but knows he lost,” Jahari says.

Jahari is excited to have Whitney Andrews play The Prophet.  Though written for a male, the role seems perfect for her.  “My mother is a pastor, very open and exuberant,” Jahari says.  “I saw the same free-flowing child of the ’60s in Whitney.  The audience will really be drawn to her.”

Jahari — who in addition to directing has been a dancer, TV star and all-around goodwill ambassador for Staples — graduates in June.  “Telemachus Clay,” he says, is “the best way for me to give back to a theater program that’s given so much to me.”

Four years ago, Jahari Dodd came East.  Here he has found a home, resounding success — and himself.

(“Telemachus Clay” will be performed at Toquet Hall, 58 Post Road East — access through the alley to Jesup Road — this Friday [March 12] at 8 p.m., and Saturday [March 13] at 6 and 8:30 p.m.  Tickets are available at the door, and for Staples students during lunch periods this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

8 Comments

Posted in Arts, Staples HS, Teenagers

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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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Toquet Talent

Posted on May 19, 2009 | Comments Off on Toquet Talent

Sometimes you find art in the strangest places.  Like down a Westport alley, and up some stairs.

This week Toquet Hall is hosting its 6th annual art show.  Students from Staples, Weston and Green’s Farms Academy are exhibiting over 70 paintings, drawings, photos and sculptures in space usually reserved for concerts, open mics and hanging out.

Art teachers will judge the winners.  But stop by from 3-9 p.m. through Thursday, and judge for yourself.  Here are three great samples.

Toquet Hall art show

Toquet Hall art show

Toquet Hall art show

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