Depot Theatre
The Depot Theatre is in what was once a busy Delaware and Hudson railroad stop on the line connecting Albany and Montreal. With the decline of tourism and passenger rail service, the station was sold to the Town of Westport in 1974 for one dollar, although the depot is still a stop for Amtrak. The Westport Historical Society began a lovely restoration of the building in 1976 and in 1979 the Depot Theatre took up residence in the building as a community theatre. The theatre became an Equity professional theatre in 1988.
When I worked there, the rail line was still quite active with freight traffic, necessitating occasional pauses in theatrical activity. I spent a summer there in 1999 as Sid in The Pajama Game, a generally positive experience slightly marred by the isolation of the community, bad feelings held over from a difficult gig earlier in the summer, a severe allergic reaction to something in the air that caused me and my leading lady to lose our voices on the final weekend of the run and the fact that I was a character type rather than a leading man.
Depot Theatre sunset
Depot Theatre entrance
The Pajama Game