Provincetown Theater

Provincetown Theater Foundation

Provincetown is the undisputed birthplace of Modern American drama. Ever since the Provincetown Players produced Eugene O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff in 1916, the town has hosted and nurtured playwrights and writers – from Tennessee Williams to contemporary award-winners such as Norman Mailer, Michael Cunningham, Wendy Kesselman, Paula Vogel and John Guare. Yet, once the famous Playhouse on the Wharf burned down in 1977, Provincetown had no adequate facility for performing and developing new plays.

In 2001, a group of prominent community members formed the Provincetown Theater Foundation, Inc. as a 501© 3 non profit organization, to manifest a long-held dream – construction of a new, state-of-the art theater facility to house the decade-old Provincetown Repertory Theatre (REP), a professional Equity company, and the community-based Provincetown Theatre Company (PTC), active for forty-one years. With enormous support from individual contributors, volunteers and friends of the community, the Foundation raised the funds to make the building a reality. Located on the grounds of the former Provincetown Mechanics building at 238 Bradford Street, construction began in September 2003.

The opening of the Provincetown Theater on June 22, 2004 was a landmark in Provincetown’s cultural history. Our premier season garnered national media attention, rave reviews (NY Times and Best of Boston, Boston Magazine) and artistic contributions from several acclaimed authors, playwrights and directors including Pulitzer Prize writers Michael Cunningham, Terence McNally and Norman Mailer. Please see the enclosed descriptive materials.

The Provincetown Theater Foundation forged a three-way agreement to share the facility among the Foundation, PTC and REP. The Foundation also developed PtownTix for its box-office component .

In an effort to reduce public confusion about similar names, avoid duplication of staff, operations and fundraising efforts, the two companies merged on November 1, 2005, to form The New Provincetown Players (NPP). With continuity in leadership provided by Producing Artistic Director Guy Wolf, NPP is forging a distinguished new identity using the best elements of REP and PTC to create its current and future seasons. The Provincetown Theater Foundation and the New Provincetown Players are now one and the same, under the leadership of one Board of Directors.

Site Last Updated: February 9, 2010

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