an interesting night...

after two days of work----it began at 5 at the Dwight School gym on 109th street and 1st avenue, where I watched the Friends basketball team lose to the Dwight team by a large score. But the game began at 5; I had to be at 42nd street off ninth at 7:00. How? As the game was getting out of hand by the end of the 3rd quarter, I was able to leave a little before 6. It was cold; I rushed to 2nd avenue looking for a bus that would take me to the Q terminal at 96th street. But it did not come...what next..? I decided to go to the 103rd street station of the 6 train on Lexington Avenue and take that to 59th, where I could get a N or W to 42nd. And that is what I did...kind of hectic but i made it with a lot of time. Then saw the five works in progress that my friend Sarah has programmed for the new group that is running the Theater Row Theaters. Only one of them really interested me, but after all, they were "in progress". subject to change and improvement...afterwards hung out in the lounge for a party with food and drink and conversation. I told Sarah, and her partner, the woman who is producing these workshops that I remember the birth of these theaters---everyone assumes they began in the late seventies, but actually a man named Irving Maidman bought four small houses in 1960 and turned them into off Broadway Theaters. It was the height of the first off Broadway theater boom, and there were many plays looking for spaces. The theaters, as far as I know were used a lot during the early sixties, but the off Broadway economy tanked by 66, and the theaters fell into ruin and disrepair. Yet the existence of these four theaters-the true fore runners of theater role, is hardly known. I explained this to the two women and they urged me to find more information about the spaces and let them know about it. Today I googled Maidman and anything that could add information about those spaces, but came up with very little. I will check the Theater Worlds, of that time, and do some other investigations There is a video collage downstairs in the lobby of the four theaters that does not show this early history that I so well remember--perhaps my research and memory can add to it. We shall see.
Now a four day break from Friends---not clear what I will do on each day. Tonight I may try to check out a play downtown that a friend of mine is in. Tomorrow is the usual Sunday "improvisation" day--Monday and Tuesday who knows..? Really about a million choices to make. So I will report soon.