From The New York Times:
Rescue the Drama Book Shop
A reader suggests that the theater community establish a fund to pay the rent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/opinion/letters/drama-book-shop.html
This letter (above), published in the New York Times today, was really prompted by the closure of TheatreBooks in Toronto in 2014. I felt at the time that the theatre community did not do enough to rally behind Leonard McHardy and John Harvey to try to figure out some way the store could stay in business.
When a cultural institution shutters – be it a long standing theatre company or a small bookstore dedicated to a particular community within the arts – it can be a long time (if ever) before someone else comes along to fill the vacuum.
When I read about the Drama Book Shop in New York City now facing the same problem, it just got to me. I love the DBS. It’s not only a great resource but a wonderful place just to go and see what’s going on in the NYC theatre community. The last time I was in New York to review some shows, I had time to kill after a matinee and before an evening performance. I popped into the Drama Book Shop and to my great delight, I saw there would be a reading by Stephen Adly Guirgis of a new play he was working on. Perfect! I attended the reading held in the basement of the store (the same basement where Lin-Manuel Miranda composed music for In the Heights) and still made it to Joe Allen for dinner before my next curtain!
Relationships between tenants and landlords, or even among friends and family, can oftentimes be fraught with conflict. That is why every so often someone has to say as Camila does in the second act of In the Heights, “Oh my god, enough”!
