Dear Friend,

Tonight’s the night! Join us when the third annual New Year/New Plays Festival kicks off this evening at 7:30pm with Charlotte Bush’s Charlottesville, the first of five virtual play readings through Sunday, January 10. In case you haven’t done so yet, remember to reserve your free tickets for any and all plays, as well as the panel discussion with the playwrights on Saturday, January 9 at noon, by visiting palmbeachdramaworks.org or calling the box office at 561.514.4042, x2.

We also want to remind you to remain on Zoom at the conclusion of each program, when we’ll be seeking your invaluable feedback.
Mark and Diane Perlberg are the executive producers of the New Year/New Plays Festival; Sandra and Bernard Meyer are the associate producers. PBDonline is sponsored by Louise and Barry Snyder. Tickets to all programs are free, but reservations are required. And donations to PBD are always welcome.
As we start the new year with an initiative that is all about contributing to the future of theatre, we also want to take another look back at PBD’s history in celebration of our 20th anniversary season. This week, we open the time capsule on seasons two and three. 

We moved into a new home for our 2001-2002 season, the Studio Theatre located at 330 Clematis Street. It was “tucked away in the Via Jardin courtyard,” wrote Ronald Mangravite in New Times, and was “miniscule. The facility has fewer than 50 seats and spans roughly 20 feet from the last (fourth) row to the back of the stage.” He went on to say, “Dramaworks may be bound in a nutshell, but its standards are quite high indeed if its latest offering, Camping with Henry and Tom by Mark St. Germain, is any indication.”      

That play, which is scheduled to be remounted during our 2021-2022 season, is a work of fiction inspired by a 1921 camping trip taken by Warren G. Harding, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. The other plays in our second season were Crossing Delancey by Susan Sandler, Wrong Turn at Lungfish by Garry Marshall (yes, that Garry Marshall), and the world premiere of The Velveteen Undertow by Michael McKeever.
Jim McConville as Ford (left), Charles Newman as Edison (center), and Hal Johnstone as Harding in Camping with Henry and Tom.
Our third season, 2002-2003, featured Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, James Yaffe’s The Deadly Game, Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and The American Dream, and Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca. The one-act Albee plays marked a turning point for PBD. They were not the kinds of plays audiences expected to see at a small regional theatre in Florida still trying to establish itself. Neither, for that matter, was Fugard’s work. But The Zoo Story, about dehumanization, and The American Dream, which Albee described as “an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity,” were particularly risky. Would audiences be interested? As it turns out, they were.  

“I decided to do theatre that was my own particular taste,” says Producing Artistic Director Bill Hayes. “So, I went out on a limb. And patrons started to come out of the woodwork. They were so encouraging. Many people said things like, ‘Finally, somebody in the community is producing edgier and more thought-provoking works. Please do more.’ Those two plays marked the beginning of what would become our brand. They changed everything.”
Michael Collins (left) and Bill Hayes in The Zoo Story.
Stay Safe.