Author: jeff

FAIRFIELD — Recently unveiled concepts for 15 sites operated by the Parks and Recreation Department call for major upgrades at some of the town’s most popular spots.

Parks and Recreation Director Anthony Calabrese said the concepts released are part of the department’s master plan, which has been in the works for about a year and aims to build a road map for the 90 or so town properties it oversees.

Calabrese said Jennings Beach would get the most upgrades under the concept if it was followed through with. The plan would be to build a pollinator pathway, an amphitheater, and a small dog park, among other improvements, at the site, according to town documents on the project.

“The South Pine Creek Recreation area one is a unique plan,” he said. “Even the Town Hall complex, I think, is a fantastic plan.”

Each concept is very different based on the site, Calabrese said, noting some call for complete overhauls while others would get minor improvements.

A pollinator pathway and dog park are also featured in the Lake Mohegan concept. The Town Hall concept calls for new and improved parking and pedestrian walkways as well as a community garden.

One concept is already receiving push-back. The Ash Creek Conservation Association sent out an email Thursday urging residents to object to a proposed amphitheater at the Ash Creek open space.

“We are concerned about the impact of sound and lights on the wildlife of Ash Creek, especially since we know the negative impact this will have on migratory shorebirds,” it said in the email. “Residents of Black Rock will also be concerned about the impact on their quality of life as sound travels…

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Madeline Sayet in “Where We Belong”/Photo: Liz Lauren

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Many local cultural events in Chicago now begin with an acknowledgement, often prerecorded, that the land where the event takes place—the land where the audience is sitting—is the usurped homeland of indigenous peoples. It reminds us, too, that Native Americans are not gone from the city and a large local population still engages with their traditions and urban life. A busy culture-vulture will hear the pronouncement often and may become inured to it. That is, until it is spoken live, on stage, by Madeline Sayet, the Mohegan writer-performer whose autobiographical one-woman show, “Where We Belong,” is at the Goodman’s intimate Owen Theatre.

The Mohegan people (not to be confused with the Mohicans) are still centered around their homeland in Connecticut. Sayet’s great-aunt founded the Tantaquidgeon Museum in that state in 1931. Her mother pushed the U.S. government to recognize the Mohegan as a tribe, an effort that required compiling exhaustive genealogies. Historic connections and continuity mean a lot to Sayet and her people. So when Sayet emerges onto her set, a serpentine mound of earth onstage and a celestial array of lamps above, and walks upstage to acknowledge the legacy of local tribes, “Where We Belong” is already a tour de force. The performance grows even better as she delves into the travels she made, presumably in her twenties, which connected her personal history to her people’s past among the vanquishers and to their vital present, in part by digging deeply into the work of Shakespeare.

Sayet is an engaging storyteller who crosses several worlds. In the spirit world, her physical grace conveys the bird that is her inner spirit. Indeed, she declares that the play isn’t about Shakespeare, and isn’t a traditional Mohegan…

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