FALLS VILLAGE — The year-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary continued in Falls Village on Saturday, Aug. 15, with a bustling downtown and volunteers dressed in Colonial-era garb at a festival hosted by the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society.
Highlights included reenactors, house tours, horse-drawn carriage rides and music.
Shortly after the event kicked off, the Historical Society’s Judy Jacobs rolled out from the Society’s headquarters on Railroad Street behind the wheel of a modern-day utility vehicle while dressed in period costume.
Jacobs made her way up to the Beebe Hill Schoolhouse, where Krista Barger and Tanya Golden delivered lessons on writing in cursive with a quill pen to a group of students.
Everyone was in period costume and character, except for a couple of moments when the teachers added some contemporary context for the child actors or visitors crowded into the tiny schoolhouse.
Golden said the one-room schoolhouse served students in kindergarten through eighth grade from 1843 to 1914. Its largest enrollment was 51 students.
Children clad in Colonial-era fashion received a lesson in cursive writingfrom a pair of teachers in the Beebe Hill Schoolhouse on Saturday, Aug. 15.Patrick L. Sullivan
Golden told the children that Beebe Hill was staffed almost exclusively by single women who boarded with local families.
The one exception was a male teacher who was allegedly strict and unpopular. The teacher was so disliked, volunteers said, that the boys decided the best course of action was to gang up on him and throw him out the window.
“That window,” said Golden, pointing to the north side of the building.
Some wondered about the fate of the strict and unpopular male teacher.
“He didn’t die,” Golden said. “But he didn’t come back either.”
At the Green, Marlinspike – a musical group consisting of Rachel Gall on fiddle, Cole Vanseters on guitar and Dan Whelan on banjo and vocals – started their set with a spirited rendition of “Paul Jones’ Victory.”
A horse-drawn carriage clopped by en route to pick up passengers farther up Main Street, while visitors ambled over to the Historical Society for reenactors and demonstrations. The Center on Main hosted a program on Alexander Hamilton later in the afternoon, and students from Lee H. Kellogg School sold drinks and snacks to raise money for the eighth grade class trip to Washington, D.C.
(From L to R) Jakob Kerr-Lucero (Jake), Charlotte Wise (Candy), Richie Crane (Joey), Brianna Vivace (Coco), and Vivian Burnham (Stage Manager) in rehearsal for Sharon Playhouse’s “Zombie Prom.”
Set in a candy-colored 1950s high school, “Zombie Prom” has everything a vintage teen musical could want: a sweet girl, a rebellious bad boy, a terrifyingly strict principal, rock ’n’ roll, big dance numbers and enough adolescent angst to power a small town. It also has a dead boyfriend who refuses to let the grave interfere with his love life.
The show is the second annual production of the Sharon Playhouse’s Launchpad Company, a pre-professional program for theater artists ages 15 to 20. This year’s young cast comes from communities on both sides of the Connecticut-New York border, including Alex Wilbur of Lakeville as Eddie Flagrante, Carlo Desy of Fairfield as Jonny, Abby Callaway of Woodbury as Toffee and Callie Audia of Dover Plains as Miss Delilah Strict.
Rehearsals for “Zombie Prom” at the Sharon Playhouse.Lynette Shy
The musical, with music by Dana P. Rowe, lyrics by John Dempsey and a book by Dempsey and Hugh M. Murphy, premiered Off-Broadway in 1996. Sharon’s production has a particularly fun connection to that original run: Director DJ Salisbury was a member of the original Off-Broadway company. He also returns to the Sharon Playhouse, where he directed “42nd Street” in 2011. Michelle Lemon choreographs, and Eric Thomas Johnson is music director.
Expect catchy songs, big personalities, teenage melodrama, zombie shenanigans and enough high camp to make death look like a pretty good time. But underneath all the hairspray and grave dirt, “Zombie Prom” is also a coming-of-age story about love, friendship, refusing to become somebody you’re not and never letting something as minor as death get between you and true love.
“Zombie Prom” runs Aug. 21 and 22 at 7 p.m. and Aug. 23 at 3 p.m. at the Sharon Playhouse, 49 Amenia Road, Sharon. Tickets at sharonplayhouse.org
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