Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater CONTACT:PO Box 797 Wellfleet, MA 02667 508-349-3011 www.what.orgJeff Zinn, Producing Artistic Director
DESCRIPTION:The Cape, of course, has been known for leadership in American theater
since 1915, when the Provincetown Players presented Eugene O'Neill's
"Bound East for Cardiff" in the Wharf Theatre, with its back doors
opening onto the sea. For most of the century, however, the dominant
theme of Cape theater has been the straw-hat circuit of standby
musical comedy favorites for summer tourists. Today, that tradition
has given way to a new wave of experimental companies, of which the
leader at least chronologically, and arguably artistically as well, is
the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre (WHAT), founded in 1985, which
last year became the oldest professional philanthropic theater on Cape
Cod. "Speak the unspeakable!" "Awaken the audience!" "Enrich and
humanize!"--these are the cris de coeurs as WHAT provides cutting-edge theater in challenging new works.
Cited by Variety as the most exciting and innovative theater on the Cape, WHAT has also made the Boston Globe's "Top Ten Best Theaters" list three times in three years, and the Elliott Norton Award in 2001 for "establishing a beachhead for serious theater" on the Cape.
WHAT's audience is quite diverse and its performances are often sold out, but ticket sales in small theater venues cannot support a professional theater company. About 35-40% of WHAT's budget is provided by philanthropic gifts, and it needs always to widen its circle of
patrons. Won't you be an "angel" and help leading theater flourish on
the Cape? (2002: CULTURE: Arts: Performing: Theatre and Film)
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