May 16, 2008

 

Gary Parker, Director

Government and Community Affairs

New York University

 

Dear Mr. Parker,

Ralph Sevush, our Executive Director for Business Affairs, passed on your e-mail of yesterday afternoon.

 

If we understand the new proposal for the renovation and reconstruction of the building housing the Provincetown Playhouse correctly, NYU has heard and responded to the outcry raised in opposition to the Playhouse’s demolition.

 

The Dramatists Guild of America is the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists.  On behalf of our entire membership, some 6,000 writers nationwide, I’d like to express our gratitude and appreciation for this decision, eleventh hour though it may have been, to abandon the plans to destroy this iconic site for the American drama.  The Provincetown Playhouse was virtually the birthplace of the off-Broadway movement, a movement which is still struggling to survive the effects of 9/11.  To pull down the playhouse might very well have suggested to theatergoers and writers that nothing south of 42nd St. matters, even to a great institution such as NYU. 

 

The outcry of the last several weeks has clearly confirmed something which our playwright members already knew.  The Provincetown Playhouse means something to people, especially to students.  Eugene O’Neill’s first play was performed here.  It was where theatre-goers first heard the work of Edna St. Vincent-Millay, Edward Albee, John Guare, Sam Shepard, Charles Busch, and David Mamet.  It presented the great double-bill of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and Albee’s The Zoo Story.  It was the embodiment of the idea that new writers didn’t have to remain invisible and silent while moneyed producers funded the musicals of their wealthy friends on Broadway.  The Playhouse provided a place where unknowns could speak to their neighbors about matters of politics and art.  The playhouse changed the American theatre forever.  To tear it down would have been—would be—a tragedy.

 

Many of our members teach at NYU.  You cannot imagine the damage which would have been done to the faith of their students in the future of the arts if this building had been destroyed. 

 

To these young writers, the building itself is a mecca.  They walk by, they remember, they take their parents to see it.  Its existence reminds us all what is possible when brave people unite for a common cause, in this case, nothing less than the freedom of artistic expression.  If we can keep the homes of our pioneering playwrights intact, and restore them as museums, surely we can, and must, keep their theatres intact as well. 

 

You have only to look at Broadway for proof that mindlessly destroying theatres devastates the community.  Thankfully, even though the 42nd Street theatres were used for other purposes for years, someone kept them from being demolished.  And now, since their revival by the 42nd Street Project, they have served as the basis of an even more vibrant artistic and commercial environment. 

 

It is not fanciful to say that The Provincetown Playhouse has tenure at New York University.  To demolish it would be the equivalent of ejecting a crotchety old professor just because the patches at the elbows of his jacket are wearing thin. Education is not communicated solely in lectures.  Education occurs when students catch the passion of beloved teachers, when students realize the great deep pleasures of learning, when they understand the lessons of the past.  Craggy old theatres inspire students to form their own writing groups, to put on their own plays, to force their own way onto the stage of the American theatre. 

 

The Provincetown Playhouse is a place where great voices were once heard.  The fact that you intend to restore the theater itself to working status means that great voices will be heard there once again.  Artists have managed to record the history of our life in our time.  Surely that is a charge a great University is compelled to lead, even if the step is as simple as standing in front of a musty building where greatness once lived. 

 

The decision you have reached will be applauded by playwrights everywhere. Please keep us apprised of your plans as they are refined and as you move forward.

 

Sincerely,                    

John Weidman, President                        Marsha Norman, Vice-President