WESTPORT — It’s almost curtains for the Depot Theatre’s smash-summer.
“The vision for the summer is in large part what we have accomplished, and what’s been exciting about the summer isn’t any one production,” Sarah Wilson, executive director, said.
“It’s seeing all the parts of the Depot Theatre connect. Watching our professional equity theater connect with our Academy, our community partnerships, and opportunities for young people to work along side professional artists. The Academy story has been a big part of our summer, and that began with ‘Hadestown: Teen Edition.’ Eight main-stage performances. Multiple sellouts. Young artists from across the region auditioned from Lake Placid, Plattsburgh, to Ticonderoga. They did an amazing job, and they helped demonstrate that Academy programming can really occupy the same physical and cultural space as a professional season. That was really exciting for us to witness, to watch and experience.”
Through Depot’s partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County and 4-H, and through the Academy’s growing technical apprenticeship opportunities, young people are developing confidence, communication and leadership skills while also learning lighting, sound, production and stagecraft alongside working theatre professionals.
The Depot Theatre Academy also mounted a concert, but not simply a concert.
“’It’s Ride the Cyclone.’ It was live professional band, costumes, projection, theatrical sound effects, immersive production elements and seven Academy performers also on the main stage. It was a fabulous two-evening event and also just reinforced that our Academy performers can occupy this same space on our main stage,” she said.
The Academy summer programming culminates with the sold-out “Seussical Jr.” Friday through Sunday at the Whallonsburg Grange Hall.
“There is space in (today’s) dress rehearsal. It’s a junior intro program serving over 50 kids. What’s really exciting about this is some of the young people who grew up in the Academy are now coming back to lead the next generation. Cooper Halloran and Ella Lobdell started doing theater at age 8 or so. They were both in ‘Hadestown.’ They were in ‘Ride the Cyclone’ this summer. They were in ‘Drowsy Chaperone’ last summer, ‘Spelling Bee’ the summer before,” she said.
Ironically 10 years ago, Halloran and Lobdell performed in “Seussical Jr.,” and now 10 years later they are directing the Tony Award-winning “fantastical musical extravaganza.”
“It is supported by other mentors, but they are directing our junior intro program this year. That’s when we realized we are not simply producing shows. We are growing artists and leaders and, hopefully, lifelong participants in the arts,” Wilson said.
The 134-seat Deport Theatre is located in a functioning train station. When trains arrive, action pauses, and resumes when the trains depart without missing a beat.
“’Tick, Tick…Boom!,’ which was our first main-stage equity production of the summer, also brought Academy students into our main-stage performances through a comp initiative. We just really said, ‘Alright, we want your families in here, we want you in here,’ so we comped them all and they came,” Wilson said.
“Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” an unexpected surprise, just closed.
“When I began at the Depot Theatre, I was told that musicals generally tended to sell better than plays, and that plays were much harder. This play has been a real hit this summer. Multiple sold-out performances. Our closing on Sunday was sold-out. It was a 1973 memory play. It follows an Irish-Catholic family as a major crisis unfolds when a parish priest overhears the older sister explaining the birds and the bees to her younger sister. It watches like a sit-com. It was a lovely surprise to see it do so well, but we had many sold-out shows during that run and that was really exciting,” she said.
“Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help” cast members Char Jones and Maya Judd both came through the Boquet River Theatre Festival, the youth theatre program that preceded today’s Depot Theatre Academy. Maya Judd, a rising 7th grader at Keene Central School, is one of Depot’s first child actors in a professional Main Stage production.
The summer season closes with “Ring of Fire,” which features the music of Johnny Cash and runs Aug. 20 through Sept. 6.
“We’re really exited to bring that. Lots of performances have already sold-out. For a 134-seat theater, every audience matters. It’s wonderful to see that kind of enthusiasm. The sold-out shows for ‘Hadestown,’ ‘Incident,’ and ‘Ring of Fire;’ we have been really encouraged by audience response this summer,” Wilson said.