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?