By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — The Remarkable Theater, the drive-in movie program launched during the COVID pandemic, for a second consecutive year has failed to screen any films despite securing town permission to use the Imperial Avenue lot.

With its permit expiring after Sept. 4 for the 2024 season, questions arise about whether the group — whose longterm goal has been to open a theater to employ people with disabilities — may be in an indefinite holding pattern or shut down.

Repeated efforts by the Westport Journal to contact Remarkable Theater officials listed on the group’s website — promoting an unspecified opening night and schedule for the ’24 season — yielded no information about why there were no screenings this year or if the group has a future.

Eric Bernheim, a Westport lawyer who represented the theater at a Board of Selectwomen’s meeting in June, said last week he did not have any information about the group’s current status. “I just represented them before the selectwomen,” he said.

And board member Stacie Curran forwarded the Journal’s request to Douglas Tirola, the theater’s artistic director, for comment. Tirola did not respond to that request or to another inquiry sent to him directly. State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, another board member, also referred the Journal to Tirola.

The 2024 permit for the theater to use the Imperial lot, from July 1 through Sept. 4, was approved June 12 by the selectwomen. Like the year before, the meeting was contentious as representatives of the Remarkable Theater and Levitt Pavilion disagreed over noise interference between the groups’ shows and shared parking. 

The two organizations have tussled for at least three seasons over the same issues. This year, the selectwomen told the Levitt and Remarkable representatives they could not mediate the continuing quarrels. The organizations were told to work out their scheduling and noise issues on their own.

Bernheim at the time asked the selectwomen to help resolve some of the disagreements, such as which group could hold performances on specified days. But the selectwomen approved only the Remarkable’s permit to use the lot. It is not their job to referee other issues, the board said.

“We can give this permission, but we cannot intervene … if there’s a conflict,” Selectwoman Candice Savin said at the June meeting.

Mary Miller, the lawyer who represented the Levitt Pavilion at several selectwomen’s meetings where the Remarkable-Levitt issues were debated, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Last year, the Remarkable Theater went before the Board of Selectman twice, once May 24 and a second time Aug. 28, and was granted two permits to use the parking lot for movie screenings: one permit from June 26 to Aug. 23  and the second from Aug. 28 through the start of November. Although the group’s representatives said they sought the second permit because they planned to use the Imperial lot at least for a shortened fall season, in the end, no films were shown during either season.

And in 2022, a Board of Selectwomen meeting in June erupted into an angry confrontation between the two groups when Remarkable representatives said Levitt officials had delayed sharing its schedule, preventing the Remarkable  from arranging screening dates that didn’t interfere with Levitt programming.

“It has been punishing and painful and I feel like we have been bullied by the Levitt,” Curran said at that meeting.

“We have spent many hours talking about these issues and trying to come together and work out dates that work for everybody,” Selectwoman Andrea Moore told both groups at that same meeting.

Despite the clash, the drive-in hosted a series of movies through summer until the end of October 2022.

The Westport Cinema Initiative, the organization that created the Remarkable Theater, was established in 2011, according to the theater’s website. 

Its mission is to give employment opportunities to disabled adults, and to bring a movie theater back to Westport.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.