Monthly Feature:

By Marven Moss

    Doug Taylor, a prolific playwright who introduced a young actor named Paul Newman to a national TV audience almost 60 years ago, is still vitally engaged  at age 86 in Connecticut as a performer/director and influential acting teacher with a remarkably committed collective of acolytes.
    With the relentless zeal that has characterized his whole life, Taylor is absorbed today as an acting teacher at the Crystal Theater in Norwalk, acting and directing at the Norwalk’s Theatre Artists Workshop and as the avatar of a fraternity that assembles Saturday afternoons to work on monologues in Kevin Knight’s contemporary home on Cranbury Road in Norwalk.
   Fairfield’s Keir Dullea, an early activist in the Theatre Artists Workshop and the iconic voyager in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” describes Taylor’s theatrical influence as “incisive” and calls him “a vital presence in the theater.”
    Newman was a boyish up-and-comer with magnetic blue eyes and that irresistible mix of vulnerability and insouciance when he appeared in Taylor’s half-hour drama “Five in Judgment,” the first of 12 plays by Taylor produced by the impresario David Susskind in the 1950s, the golden age of TV. 
    In a tribute after cancer claimed Westport’s most famous resident humanitarian at age 85 last September, Taylor credited Newman with “launching my writing career.”
    “Five in Judgment” was Taylor’s riposte at self-destructive procrastination. “Paul made it work,” Taylor recalls.  “His emotional performance brought the play home.” Typically, minimizing his impact, Taylor adds: “But I did not put Paul into TV.”

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COPING IN CONNECTICUT

By David A. Rosenberg

   “We’re not suffering like some areas of the country where you hear about greatly reduced single ticket sales,” said Victoria Nolan, managing director of Yale Repertory Theatre. “Perhaps it’s because this is Connecticut where there’s a pretty strong commitment to supporting and attending the arts.”

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OLYMPIA DUKAKIS SPEAKS ABOUT “AN ACTOR’S LIFE”

By Bonnie Goldberg

Actress, teacher, activist, director, producer and author, Olympia Dukakis has been described as a modern Renaissance woman, a woman of passion and convictions who has honed her art through years of diligent study.  The charming and effervescent Miss Dukakis spoke recently at the Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts on “An Actor’s Life” as part of its Open VISIONS Forum, in partnership with the Westport Country Playhouse.

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