PROVINCETOWN PLAYHOUSE
133 MacDougal Street between Washington Square South and West 3rd Street
DECEMBER 29, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 192

Provincetown Playhouse, variant image

The Provincetown Playhouse first opened in 1916 in a town house at 139 MacDougal Street and after two seasons moved to no. 133, formerly a stables and bottling plant. Next door to the Liberal Club and Polly's Restaurant, the Playhouse, which launched the theatrical career of Eugene O'Neill, was at the heart of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia. It had special significance for Abbott, who in 1918 left Ohio to live at 137 MacDougal Street with her college friends James Light and Sue Jenkins. They had moved to New York to join the Players, and Light later became the company's director.

Until its demise after the 1929 stock market crash, the Playhouse contributed substantially to the growth of the off-Broadway stage. Closed until 1936, the theater reopened under the aegis of the WPA Federal Theater Project. In 1941, the four buildings at 133-139 MacDougal Street were rebuilt as apartments, New York University offices, and a new Provincetown Playhouse. After a vigorous second life, the theater is now once again dark.

In Abbott's photograph, the raking light of a cold December day brings the surface detail of the theater's facade into high relief, monumentalizing the modest structure. Although the image appears spontaneous--with a dapper young man in the doorway and an elderly passerby reacting to an off-camera occurence--a variant image suggests that the scene was staged: the young man wearing a derby stands alone, and an overflowing garbage can has been removed. The presence of the young man, an African-American and perhaps an actor, recalls the Playhouse's 1924 scandalous production of O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings, in which an interracial kiss on stage led to bomb threats against the theater

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