Around Town

Town Players of New Canaan Present ‘The Effect’ Sept. 4 to 14

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[The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates.]

For two weeks in September, the Town Players of New Canaan will present “The Effect” – a production that Patricia Spugani, co-president of TPNC, calls “intellectually and emotionally challenging.”

“The Effect” centers on two volunteers, Tristan and Connie, who fall in love during a clinical trial for a dopamine-based antidepressant. Their romance disrupts the trial, leaving their doctors, Dr. James and Dr. Toby, to grapple with ethical questions about their work. The play explores questions about sanity, love, and the limits of medicine. “It blends ethics, romance, and neuroscience into one play,” Spugani said. 

The play’s director, Tyler Small—who some may recognize as Andy Dufresne in the TPNC production of “The Shawshank Redemption”—said, “It’s a really important story living in today’s age. He added: “I think it’s really important.

Around Town

New Canaan Farmers Market To Launch April 23 in Lumberyard Lot

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The popular New Canaan Farmers Market is on track to open April 23 in the Lumberyard Lot downtown. The Board of Selectmen during its regular meeting last week approved the Farmers Market for an Earth Day celebration at launch through November. Market Master Lexi Gazy told the selectmen “the farmers are ready to come back,” and that offerings will include fresh organic produce as well as vendors offering pies, beef, pork, oysters, clams, orchids, preserves, jams, jellies, honey, raviolis and pickles. “We are looking forward to a great season,” Gazy said during the March 8 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “The new location worked out really well for traffic and parking.

Around Town

Podcast: Town Players of New Canaan

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Patricia Spugani, a board member and fundraising chair for the Town Players of New Canaan, a community theater organization that operates out of the Powerhouse Performance Arts Center in Waveny. We talk about the history of the Town Players, some of the locals who are most involved in it, how the pandemic affected the organization and what it is planning now, both in terms of programming and for its physical facility. 

Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Board of Selectmen

New Canaan Farmers Market To Launch May 8 in Lumberyard Lot

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Town officials on Tuesday approved a proposal to relocate the Farmers Market from its longtime home in the Center School Lot to a corner of the Lumberyard Lot at the train station. The Farmer’s Market is on track to launch May 8 and will run 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays through November. 

It will operate in the southwest corner of the Lumberyard, following a 3-0 vote by the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting. 

“We think it’s going to be convenient to downtown, convenient for shoppers and guests,” Farmers Market volunteer Patricia Spugani said during the meeting, held via videoconference. 

Some 30 vendors have already submitted applications to the New Canaan Health Department and the new space allows for expansion to accommodate additional vendors if needed, she said. “We are going to continue to require masks in the market and social distancing, along with that, no samples and no pets, which is consistent with any farmers market, with no pets,” she said. “One thing that is different, though, consistent with how we all behave in grocery stores, shoppers will be able to select their own produce. We think that food handling has been safe now, we know enough about the virus that people know to wash produce when they bring it home, and it will also keep things, traffic moving better in the market if the vendors do not have to do that for shoppers.”

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 to approve the new location for the Farmers Market. 

According to a graphic that Spugani and Market Master Lexi Gazy presented at the meeting, motor vehicles will enter and exit the lot from Elm Street (opposite Karl Chevrolet), and there will be more than 100 on-site parking spaces for shoppers.