Lila Wallace Foundation Grant Recipient for two years.
"Best Community Theatre in Fairfield County" for the past two years - Readers’s Poll, Fairfield County News.
HISTORY
The Westport Community Theatre has been a part of the community of
Weston and Westport since 1956 when we were known as the Westport
Players and gave our very first show The Happy Time at the Bedford
Elementary School.
Click here for a roster of
all the plays since 1956.
For a long time we had no real home of our own. We played in a little theatre on Kings Highway, at Westport High now called Staples, the Grange in Weston, at Weston High and Fairfield University. Our audiences even followed us to the White Barn Theatre and the Westport Country Playhouse.
Over the years we have trained any number of performers and directors, lighting, sound, set design and technically-inclined members. Not only do we have 2nd generation participants, but members who have met and married.
CURRENTLY
- A Sound Local Subscriber Base.
- Seven Mainstage Productions.
- Year Round ETC (Experimental Theatre Company) Productions.
A training ground for new directors, actors, and playwrights. - Workshops - Voice Production, Costume, Lighting, Properties, Make-up & Scenic Design.
- Participation at the Levitt Pavilion.
- Participation in Westport's First Night since its inception.
We feel that we have, over the past few years, provided not only good theatre to the area, but a great deal to the community in the form of the benefits we have produced which include among others:
- Save the Children Tsunami Relief ($2,300)
- L'Ambiance Plaza disaster ($15,000)
- Hole in the Wall Gang Camp ($14,000)
Our production of Alice taken to the Camp - Westport Country Playhouse ($3,200)
- Staples H.S. Theatre
- Nature Center: Bread & Roses for victims of AIDS
- Bridge House: Westport EMS
- Hospice: Project Return
- Children’s Connection Red Cross
- American Association of University Women
at the Westport Country Playhouse
We are constantly working to increase local community participation in our programs and have just finished two mini-courses in Voice Production and the Art of Costuming a play. This summer we successfully added produced two mainstage productions, three play readings and three performances of our new Improved Company "Space Pockets. All of this open and free of tuition to those who participate in them."
And where are we now? Remember the old Bedford Elementary where we began? It was turned into the Westport Town Hall, and we turned the downstairs into a real theatre in 1978. We've been there ever since.
We are about to confidently enter our 51st year of presenting the surrounding community with good participatory theatre in the heart of Westport.
