Fairfield, CT

Fairfield, Connecticut also appears twice in the source register — as "Fairfield", with its theatre, and "Fairfield, CT", without — and the two headings are merged here into one entry (an editorial correction for the registry; the venue decides the case, as the Kelley Theatre is the main stage of Fairfield University's arts centre). The town itself is Connecticut's shoreline history in one place: founded in 1639, among the state's earliest settlements, it was burned by British forces in 1779 during the Revolution and rebuilt around its green, where the old town hall and Congregational church still preside.

Modern Fairfield lives a double life of commuter town and college town. Five public beaches face Long Island Sound; the train carries its bankers to Manhattan; and Fairfield University, the Jesuit university founded in 1942 on a former estate, gives the town its cultural centre of gravity. The university's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, opened in 1990, contains the 740-seat Aloysius P. Kelley Theatre — the hall in this archive's records — whose seasons of classical music, jazz, dance and theatre have earned the Quick a reputation as the cultural epicentre of Fairfield County. Colonial green, Jesuit campus, Sound-front sand: Fairfield is Connecticut's temperament, evenly distributed.