The Westport Community Theatre tonight opened its production of Moss Hart’s “Light Up the Sky, “a comedy about Broadway. It runs through Feb.. 21. Performances are on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and at 2 p.m. on Sundays, with a Thursday performance on Feb, 11 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $23, $21 for seniors and students, and can be purchased at westportcommunitytheatre.com or by calling (203) 226-1983. Westport Community Theatre is located at 110 Myrtle Ave. (Town Hall) in Westport. Pictured are (l-r) Bia Hittman, Rosanne Nelson, John Fatteross and Tom Rushen. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo

“Fat Girls, Interrupted,” a new play by two-time Grammy-nominated comedian/author Lisa Lampanelli, will receive a reading on Saturday, March 19, at 8 p.m., at Westport Country Playhouse, it was announced today.

Lisa Lampanelli: “Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean.”  (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo

Lampanelli has requested that proceeds benefit The Center for Family Justice in Bridgeport. 
 
The cast will include Lampanelli as well as Broadway actress Lisa Howard, TV and film veteran Patricia Kalember, and newcomer Jessica Luck.

“Fat Girls, Interrupted” tackles weight, body image, and food issues from the perspective of four very different women with four very different problems, an announcement said.

By Susan Granger

Set in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in October, 1944, the powerful, poignant “Son of Saul” revolves around a Hungarian Jewish prisoner named Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig). He’s a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of prisoners assigned the grim task of carrying corpses from the gas chamber to the crematorium, then carting away the ashes to be discarded.

As Allied Forces draw closer to the camp, the pace of killing is accelerated. Among the dead, Saul finds the body of a young boy he claims as his son, and he becomes obsessed with finding a rabbi among the prisoners to say Kaddish (the prayer for the dead) and give the child a proper burial.

Inspired by “Voices from Beneath the Ashes,” true tales from Auschwitz which was published in Jean-Paul Sartre’s periodical “Les Temps Modernes,” Hungarian-born writer/director Laszlo Nemes noted:  “The story of the Holocaust is not the story of the exceptions who survived. It is the story of the dead.”

Co-scripting with Clara Royer, first-time feature film director Nemes reveals the agony solely through Saul’s perception, as cinematographer Matyas Erdely consigns violence and nudity into the un-focused background, along with the desperate wailing and persistent screaming.

Wynter Kullman (l) and Melody James perform today in the lunchtime Play With Your Food series at Toquet Hall. Three one-act plays were presented with food supplied by Matsu Sushi of Westaport. Additional performances in Westport are on Wednesday and Thursday and later in Fairfield and Greenwich.  (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Phyllis Groner for WestportNow.com

Scenes from today’s Play With Your Food lunchtime play reading at Toquet Hall. Phyllis Groner for WestportNow.com

It was a capacity, enthusiastic crowd at the Westport Center for Senior Activities today for a performance by the Galvanized Jazz Band. They played New Orleans jazz, Dixieland, blues, rags, swing, spirituals and more. The Sunday Indoor Music Festival is sponsored by the Friends of the Westport Center for Senior Activities, programmed by the Levitt Pavilion, and funded by the Mortimer and Mimi Levitt Foundation. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Phyllis Groner for WestportNow.com

Families attending today’s Westport Country Playhouse Children’s Festivities Series musical “Chicken Dance” got to meet some live chickens from Westport’s Wakeman Town Farm. Carrie Aitkenhead and daughter Cora, 5, showed two bantam (small) breed chickens, Nuggets, a Japanese breed black silkie, and Lula, a white cochin. According to Aitkenhead, these chickens are particularly tame and friendly with adults and children. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

Cast members of “Chicken Dance” at the Westport Country Playhouse today got a chance to meet some real live chickens from Westport’s Wakeman Town Farm. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo