Connecticut Travel

Westport Country Playhouse will open its 2018 Season with an uplifting tale of bravery, pride, and sisterhood, “Flyin’ West,” written by Pearl Cleage and directed by Seret Scott, playing May 29 through June 16.  This year marks the historic theater’s 88th season.

“’Flyin’ West’ is a magical experience, at once funny, suspenseful, gripping, and then completely, joyously satisfying,” said Mark Lamos, Playhouse artistic director. “The characters are richlydelineated and the plot crafted to keep you on the edge of your seat. I’ve loved Pearl Cleage’s writing for years and am thrilled to have Seret Scott directing on our stage at last.”

“Flyin’ West” is set in 1898 as the Civil War is still a living memory and the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas, offers a refuge for many former slaves.  At one homestead lives a family of courageous and sharp-witted women determined to make a place for themselves.  They overcome tremendous odds in a heroic effort to escape the scars of the past. 

Cast members are Brittany Bradford as Fannie Dove (NYC/Regional credits: “For Colored Girls,” “The Profane,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Neighbors,” “Avenue Q,” “Next to Normal,” “Ragtime,” “Stick Fly”);  Michael Chenevert as Frank Charles (NYC: Writer and star of one-man show, “An Adam Experiment,” about Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; TV: “Ugly Betty,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Following”); Nikiya Mathis as Sophie Washington (Off-Broadway: Atlantic Theater Company, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons; TV: “Braindead” (recurring), “The Blacklist,” “Elementary,” “Person of Interest,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Night Of”; Film: “Compliance,” “Knucklehead”); Edward O’Blenis as Wil Parish (Westport Country Playhouse: “The Old Settler,” “A Member of the Wedding,” directed by Joanne Woodward; Film: “Eden,” “Proud,” “On the Outs”; MFA: Yale School of Drama).

Also, Brenda Pressley as Miss Leah (Broadway: “The Lyons,” “The American Plan,” original casts of “Cats” and “Dreamgirls”; Film: “Cradle Will Rock,” “It Could Happen To You”; TV: “Elementary,” “Mysteries of Laura,” “Brewster Place”); and Keona Welch as Minnie Dove Charles (Off-Broadway: “Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry,” “Court-Martial at Fort Devens” – AUDELCO Award Best Ensemble; Film: “Custody,” “Didn’t I Ask For Tea?”; Netflix: “Seven Seconds”).

Director Seret Scott has helmed a dozen productions at The Old Globe as an associate artist. Her Off-Broadway directing credits include New Victory Theater, Second Stage, and Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. Regionally she directed “Native Son” at Yale Repertory Theatre, Court Theatre, and Marin Theatre Company. Other regional venues include Long Wharf Theatre and Hartford Stage, among many more. She was recently given a playwright/directing residency with the Eugene O’Neill National Theater Institute. Scott is a former director-in-residence with New Dramatists, a PEW/TCG Artist Residency Grant awardee, a produced playwright, and a Drama Desk Award-winning actress. She is on the executive board of SDC.

Playwright Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer whose work has won commercial acceptance and critical praise in several genres. She is an award-winning playwright of a dozen works including “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” and “Flyin’ West,” the most-produced new play in the country in 1994.  She is also a bestselling author whose first novel, “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,” was an Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

The design team includes Marjorie Bradley Kellogg, scenic design; Heidi Leigh Hanson, costume design; Stephen Strawbridge, lighting design; and Frederick Kennedy, sound design. “Flyin West” Production Partners are Johnna G. Torsone and John McKeon; Corporate Production Sponsor is Fidelity Investments. 

Performance schedule is Tuesday at 7 p.m., Wednesday at 2 and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.  Special series feature Taste of Tuesday (May 29), LGBT Night OUT (May 31), Opening Night (June 2), Sunday Symposium (June 3), Together at the Table Family Dinner (June 5), Open Captions (June 10), Backstage Pass (June 13), Playhouse Happy Hour (June 14), and Thursday TalkBack (June 14). 

Single tickets start at $30; buy early for best prices.  For more information and to buy tickets, vi

The exciting summer season at the Railroad Museum of New England launches on Memorial Day Weekend. Beginning on Saturday, May 26, families wanting to enjoy the scenic views of the Naugatuck River and the Litchfield Hills are invited to take a ride back in time on the Museum’s vintage 1920s passenger coaches.

Trains leave Thomaston Station at 12 noon and 2 pm on Saturdays and Sundays beginning this Holiday weekend, and throughout the summer. The 2 pm trains have the added feature of stopping at Fascia’s Chocolates in Waterbury to enjoy delicious selections of sweets.

Kicking off the season with some “special sauce,” on Saturday, May 26, the Museum is offering the “Litchfield Hills BBQ and Whiskey Special,” sponsored by Litchfield Distillery. This special event, for adults over 21, features a delicious mix of bourbon, BBQ and music with a train ride and scenic views.

The program starts at Thomaston Train Station at 5 pm, with the serving of the “Litchfielder”— Litchfield Distillery’s signature cocktail. The BBQ includes a hearty BBQ appetizer buffet of pulled pork sliders, dry rubbed chicken wings, BBQ ribs, bourbon BBQ meatballs wrapped in bacon, and more, all provided by Black Rock Tavern of Thomaston.

On the train ride to Torrington each guest will be offered a “Brown Derby” cocktail, live music and select cheeses. Upon arrival, passengers will take a leisurely, five-minute, down-hill walk down to the Five Points Gallery for scrumptious desserts, live entertainment, and coffee.

Desserts include caramel pecan cake drops, maple bourbon cannolis, caramel apple mini cheesecakes, truffle filled double chocolate cookie tarts, and mini cupcakes. The event finishes up with a walk back to the train and return ride to Thomaston, while enjoying a “Mochalotion” dessert cocktail.

Further into the season, the Museum also is scheduling four special excursions with the “Torrington Twilight Express” on Wednesdays from July 11th through August 1st. This special express train will run in collaboration with the Main Street Marketplace and leave Thomaston Station at 5 pm, departing Torrington at 7:30 pm, allowing passengers the chance to enjoy Torrington’s popular street festival.

Bear Creek Campground is one of Connecticut’s most amazing campgrounds in the Litchfield Hills and opens in May. This campground is part of Lake Compounce, a family-friendly destination with an award-winning roller coaster, several water parks, and even an antique carousel.

Bayou Bay is an enormous wave pool that is the perfect place for youngsters and teens alike and is the perfect place to splash around. Another top two attractions is a family rafting experience that twists and turns down Mammoth Falls and if you like to slip and slide at top notch speed, try out the slide called the rip tide racer. For younger kids five and under, the lazy Croc-O- Nile river wade pool is a perfect way to cool off on a hot summer day. If your kids love pirate ships, don’t miss Clipper Cover, a pirate ship that has a 3– gallon dump bucket and a ship that fires water out of cannons.

In addition, don’t miss the Phobia Phear Coaster which is the newest thrill at Lake Compounce and the most unforgettable moment of all. It is New England’s first triple launch coaster with speeds of up to 65 miles per hour and a blood-chilling cobra roll 150 feet in the air! One of the most amazing rides is the award-winning Boulder Dash that is the #1 wooden roller coaster in the world that wends down a mountainside around boulders and through the New England woods. For folks that like nostalgia the park also offers a ride on the Wildcat Roller Coast that has been thrilling families since 1927.

At Bear Creek Campground families can pitch a tent, rent an RV site or rent a one or two bedroom cabin, cub hut or even a tipi to spend the night in! There is a two night minimum in all cabins during the weekends (Friday – Sat.) and a three-night minimum on holidays.

Located in the scenic village of West Cornwall on Rte. 128 (69 Kent Road South) by the historic covered bridge that spans the Housatonic River, Cornwall Bridge Pottery has just announced its annual Grand re-opening and Memorial Day Sale on May 26 and May 27 from 11 am to 5 pm.

In 1976 Cornwall Bridge Pottery began making lamps for Bloomingdale’s as they hosted an American Craft Celebration in honor of the nation’s 200th Anniversary. Forty-one years later they have become world renown for our artistic and elegant one of a kind designs and are a steady feature in the Shaker Workshops catalog. We have customers lighting their homes with our lamps from the Caribbean, throughout Europe and all across the United States. When you buy one of our lamps you will brighten that dark corner of the room, illuminating an heirloom treasure, or, gently read that favorite book.

Celebrate this Memorial Day Weekend with this year’s selection of high-quality lamps. In their continued commitment to function, quality, and price some lamps will be discounted as much as 75%. Arrive early for the best selection of lamps for you to add to your collection, or, to give as a gift to a loved one!

In 20th century slang, the word wampum was commonly used to denote money along with such terms as loot, moolah, and even clams, a far cry from what it meant to Native Americans who used wampum to foster spiritual and social bonds among the Native communities. The fascinating story of wampum will be told at a special Wampum Demonstration & Talk with Annawon Weeden, from the Mashpee/ Wampanoag tribe on Saturday, May 19, at the

Institute for American Indian Studies.
About Wampum

Wampum is composed of white and purple beads and discs fashioned from two different shells. The white beads are made from the whelk, a sea snail and the purple beads are made from a quahog. These shells are found in the ocean water south of Cape Cod to New York, with an abundance of them in Long Island Sound.

The shells were harvested in the warm summer months. After the meat was eaten, the shells were drilled and polished. A hole was pierced through the shell so they could be strung on strings made from plant fibers or animal tendons. Typically tubular in shape, the beads were then woven into belts, necklaces, headpieces, bracelets, earrings and other adornments. The beads were even used at day-long games with the winners taking the wampum bounty.

The color of the beads had meaning for the Algonquians. The white beads represented purity and light and were used as gifts to mark important events like births and marriages. The purple beads represented serious events like war or death. The combination of these beads represented the duality of the world, light, and darkness, man, and woman, life, and death.

Wampum Today & The Workshop

Today, Native artists and culture bearers continue to craft wampum jewelry and use wampum belts to record tribal history. At this workshop on May 19 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington participants will learn about the significance of wampum and how it continues to provide a social and spiritual bong among Native communities. A highlight of this workshop will be to watch the remarkable process of how wampum is made while listening to the stories the beads tell as they are strung.

The Institute for American Indian Studies

Located on 15 woodland acres the IAIS has an outdoor Three Sisters and Healing Plants Gardens as well as a replicated 16th c. Algonkian Village. Inside the museum, authentic artifacts are displayed in permanent, semi-permanent and temporary exhibits from prehistory to the present that allows visitors a walk through time. The Institute for American Indian Studies is located on 38 Curtis Road in Washington Connecticut and can be reached online or by calling 860-868-0518.

The Institute for American Indian Studies preserves and educates through discovery and creativity the diverse traditions, vitality, and knowledge of Native American cultures. Through archaeology, the IAIS is able to build new understandings of the world and history of Native Americans; the focus is on stewardship and preservation. This is achieved through workshops, special events, and education for students of all ages.

The Bruce Museum has opened In Time We Shall Know Ourselves, an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by New Haven photographer Raymond Smith. The exhibition will be on display in the Museum’s Bantle Lecture Gallery through June 3, 2018.

Inspired by the photographs taken in the American South in the 1930s by Walker Evans, a teacher and mentor of Smith at Yale University, as well as by Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958), in the summer of 1974 Smith embarked on a photographic expedition of his own. Smith traveled with his friend Suzanne Boyd in an aging Volkswagen from New England through the South and into the Midwest, camping and photographing people and places he encountered during the three-month journey.

 Intending to write a Ph.D. thesis in American Studies, Smith instead channeled his intense curiosity about his country and its inhabitants into a moving suite of portraits, works that are at once down-to-earth, melancholy, and filled with surprise.
 The exhibition features 52 photographs, most of which are vintage prints. Smith also has produced a book, In Time We Shall Know Ourselves. In the book Smith explains where he got the title. Driving south toward New Orleans and on the outskirts of Hattiesburg, Miss., midway through his trip he saw this sign: “In time we shall know ourselves/ Even as also we are known/ As we ourselves are known.”
 
The Bruce Museum will host a reception and artist talk for the exhibition on Sunday, April 15, 3 – 5 pm. At 3:30 pm, Raymond Smith will present a lecture titled, “I Am a Camera,” which will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. The reception is free for Museum members and students (with valid ID); non-members $15. Advance registration is required, as seating is limited. To reserve your seat, please visit brucemuseum.org and click “Reservations,” or call 203-869-0376.