LOCALadk Magazine
Issue link: https://localadkmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1518261
"Our first show was The Music Man," says Amy Mc- Namara. "We were charmed, especially when a freight train barreled through. The actors froze on stage, the lights dimmed, and our seats shook. Once the train had passed, the play resumed as though uninterrupt- ed. It was part of a collective bonding experience that helped us choose Westport as a place to live," says McNamara, who is retired from a nursing career in the lower Hudson Valley. "Those trains are LOUD," adds Nancy Fink, who splits her year between Rochester and Westport. "The whole place shakes." Some are 100 cars - - about a mile – long, or longer. Nor do they exactly speed by; those actors have to hold their "freeze" poses for several minutes, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. Wait a minute – trains "barrel through" a musical production? What's going on here? It's all part of the experience at the Depot Theatre, which employs the former freight wing of Westport's historic train station for live performances throughout the summer season. One night, Fink says, trains clattered past, only a few feet on the other side of a thin, almost 150 -year-old wooden wall, three times during one performance. Turns out it was all the same train – as it had gone by (pass 1) it had separated, forcing the front end to back up (pass 2), retrieve its severed hind end, and proceed on its way (pass 3). Plenty of "rumble and roar," as the 1940s folk song "Wabash Cannonball" has it, and freezing-in-place contortions that evening. As an active Amtrak stop, the building also hosts passenger trains. The southbound Adirondack, bound daily from Montreal to New York City, calls during weekend matinees, adding further to the racket just outside. The structure, which with the importation of a few plastic cacti could be a sound stage for a West- ern movie shoot, is, so far as anyone knows, the only one in the world that houses both a working train sta- tion and a professional theater company. All that has earned it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. The Depot Theatre: Wesport's Railside Revelry Article by Neal Burdick; Photos provided by Kim Reilly Westport's Depot Theatre is the only professional live theatre company in the Adiron- dack Park, as well as the only one in the world that's also a functioning train station.