A Broken Umbrella Theatre Was Everywhere at Westville Art Walk

Westville Art Walk filled the neighborhood with artists, music, families, pets, ducks, and a full day of street-level New Haven energy. For A Broken Umbrella Theatre, it also became a weekend-long invitation into the work we are building next: a new home at 280 Blake Street, a new Revolutionary New Haven production, and a set of public performances and pop-up moments that stretched from the Black Box to Coogan Pavilion.

The New Haven Independent captured the wider scene in its Art Walk coverage, from the rubber duck selection to the annual Rubber Duckie Race down the West River. We were glad to be part of that neighborhood-wide picture, and even happier to spend the weekend making A Broken Umbrella Theatre visible in as many corners of Westville as possible.

The weekend began with community creation. On Thursday, May 7, people gathered at Coogan Pavilion for a Community Creation Session for Revolutionary New Haven, our next original production. Through theatre exercises, improv, research, brainstorming, and story-making, neighbors helped generate raw material for a show that will explore figures including Roger Sherman, Jethro Luke, and Benedict Arnold, and ask what New Haven's revolutionary past can still unlock now.

Saturday morning started at 280 Blake Street with Bagels in the Black Box. Neighbors came through The Umbrella for a first look at the raw space, renderings, and the Raise the Roof campaign. It was part open house, part community conversation, and part practical proof of what this building can become: a flexible, welcoming arts home where people can drop in, ask questions, and see themselves in the future of the space.

That open house was also a Raise the Roof moment. The campaign table, renderings, donation materials, and conversations around the building gave visitors a concrete way to connect Art Walk energy to the work ahead: finishing The Umbrella at 280 Blake Street and turning a raw space into a year-round home for performance, gathering, and neighborhood arts activity.

From there, Revolutionary New Haven moved into the middle of Art Walk with our photo booth. Families, pets, and passersby stepped into a Revolutionary-era scene, posed with props, and helped us build the public imagination around the next show before the script is finished. It was history as a doorway, not a lecture: a way for people to put themselves inside the story.

The Duck Race got its own dose of A Broken Umbrella Theatre style. John Johnson and Pat Patterson brought their trademark dynamic to the day, calling the race for the 4th year in a row, helping turn the Art Walk tradition into something theatrical, local, and slightly larger than life. In the end, John presented Josephine Emerson, 11, of Hamden, as the annual Rubber Duckie Race winner, with her mother, Kari Emerson, looking on.

We also spent time doing what Art Walk does best: pitching in with neighbors. At the beer tent, A Broken Umbrella Theatre was pouring drinks from longtime sponsors Black Hog Brewing, keeping the evening moving and giving people another place to connect between events.

As rain shifted some activity indoors, Coogan Pavilion became the center of the Saturday night plan. Up on the Downbeat opened the evening at 7 PM with funk, soul, and jazz, enlivening the Pavilion and setting up the night for The Regicides. At 8 PM, the improv crew took the room from there, turning Art Walk suggestions into scenes and closing the weekend with a show built, as always, in the moment with the people who showed up.

That was the real shape of the weekend: not one event, but a pattern. A Broken Umbrella Theatre was welcoming people into The Umbrella, gathering ideas for the next show, playing with public history, serving alongside partners, and making performance happen wherever the day needed it. Art Walk gave Westville a full neighborhood stage. We were proud to help fill it.