Around Town

New Canaan’s CT Stage Company Opens Season with ‘Hair’

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Connecticut Stage Company, a nonprofit theater production company based in New Canaan, is nearing the start of its second season. Founded by Kate Simone and Lorah Haskins, it didn’t take long for the experienced duo to see success. Their inaugural season, which began in October of 2023, featured productions of “Into the Woods,” and “Little Women,” with both selling out weeks before each show. Simone and Haskins said they hope to keep that momentum going with their next production, “Hair,” showing Nov. 23 and 24.

Around Town

Connecticut Stage Company’s Production of ‘Little Women’ Set for April 27 [Q&A]

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The Connecticut Stage Company, an organization launched last year by two New Canaan women, is putting on a production of “Little Women” on April 27 at New Canaan Library (tickets here). We put some questions to the organization’s co-founders—Lorah Haskins, owner of The Studio for Performing Arts, and actor and director Kate Simone—about the Connecticut Stage Company and upcoming show. 

Our exchange follows. ***

New Canaanite: The Connecticut Stage Company saw huge demand for its inaugural production here in town (“Into the Woods”). Tell us about how things are going since the nonprofit organization’s founding last year. Lorah Haskins: Into the Woods was such a great kickoff for our company and gave us a really solid footing to build upon.

Around Town

Two Local Women Found ‘Connecticut Stage Company’ in New Canaan

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Lorah Haskins, owner of the The Studio for Performing Arts on Forest Street, had been trying for 10-plus years to pull together a teacher concert —a difficult task with so many of the Studio’s instructors coming up from New York City. Then when actor and director Kate Simone came on staff as a voice and acting instructor in the fall of 2019 with a desire to see it done, the pair thought, “Let’s pool all of our resources and use all of these incredible actors that are Broadway performers who come up to New Canaan all the time and teach our kids,” Haskins recalled. “And the kids want to see them perform, and we thought New Canaan should get to see them perform,” she said. So the pair devised the idea of launching their own nonprofit theater company and now, on the 20th anniversary of the Studio, Haskins and Simone are announcing the launch of the Connecticut Stage Company. Based in New Canaan and dedicated to producing quality theatrical performances with and for its community, the new organization will bring more theater productions to a community that loves the arts, its co-founders say.

Around Town

‘We Would Have To Move Our Business’: Local Business Owners on the Prospect of Reduced Rail Service to New Canaan

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Delivered with a thud last month and underscored by state transportation officials during a recent forum in town, proposed severe cuts in train service on the New Canaan branch line has prompted residents to decry the effect it would have on property values and the ability of visitors—for example, those traveling up from New York City to see the Philip Johnson Glass House—to get here. Less obvious though no less important is the effect that proposed elimination of weekend service as well as off-peak weekday service to New Canaan would have on local businesses, merchants and service providers say, largely because those who work here rely on the train. Steve Karl, vice president at Karl Chevrolet, said that as a business owner in New Canaan, “the news of limiting the train service to our community is the last thing we want to hear.”

“By cutting back the off-peak service and the complete elimination of weekend service it affects our business in a number of ways,” Karl told NewCanaanite.com. “First of all, the employees who use the train to commute will be affected and these are some of our hardest working employees who rely on the train every day. Secondly, due to the proximity of the train station to our store, we frequently sell vehicles to clients who travel by rail to pick them up at our location.