WATERFORD

Waterford is a coastal New London County town on a tab of land surrounded on three sides by water, where granite quarries once supplied stone for the Statue of Liberty's foundation.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center occupies a 90-acre seaside campus of renovated 19th-century buildings overlooking Long Island Sound. Founded in 1964, it runs the National Playwrights Conference and has launched over 1,000 new works for the American stage.

Shoreline Connecticut with a serious theatrical pedigree — Harkness Memorial State Park's 230-acre seaside estate sits down the road, an unmodified natural beach stretches a quarter mile, and the O'Neill's two Tony Awards anchor the town's identity.

Tip: The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's summer conferences are open to the public for staged readings of new plays. These are free or low-cost and let you see work years before it reaches a commercial stage.

Neighborhoods: Quaker Hill • Oswegatchie • Jordan Village