The Rationed Stage

When 50-odd summer-theater operators met in Manhattan this spring and decided to reopen this summer, they decided to gamble against gas rationing. Since then, the Straw Hat Theater has worn out its sweat band from worry, and the printing of A cards has held up the printing of programs.

Actors' Equity has modified its contracts, high-priced actors have offered to work at lower salaries; but it still isn't easy. Summer theaters, accustomed to drawing audiences from within a 50-mile radius, can now draw them only from within a five-or ten-mile one. Of roughly 75 theaters, a good third have already called it quits.

But there will be as much summer stock as hope and hay wagons permit.

> Big cities will have a lot of summer theater. Last week Broadway had four openings, certainly a recent record for late June; and for the first time in 15 years, producers are thinking of stock companies for Broadway. The Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., has moved this summer to the grand ballroom of Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. The Hilltop Theater of Ellicott City, Md. has opened in Baltimore. There is a stock company at the Willard Hotel in Washington. There will be stock, as usual, in Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis.

> There will be touring companies. The Weston, Vt. Playhouse will make a weekly circuit of five Vermont communities. In the Catskills, stock companies will play Mahomet and go to the mountain in station wagons from one hotel to another.

> There will be makeshifts and stunts. Playgoers will share their cars and form taxi groups. One producer has acquired a hay wagon. Marengo, Ill. dolled up in Gay-Nineties style, drove to the play in buggies.

Dead Birds. Even so, the list of dead pigeons already includes such famous summer theaters as the Lakewood at Skowhegan, Me. (the oldest in the East, having run continuously for 41 years); the Spa at Saratoga Springs; the South Shore Players at Cohasset, Mass.; the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Mass.; The Lost Colony pageant at Roanoke Island, N.C. (which played to almost 500,000 people in five years) ; the annual Play Festival at Central City, Colo.

There will be production difficulties, too. Although such stars as Paul Robeson (who will play Othello at Cambridge and Princeton), Gertrude Lawrence, Tallulah Bankhead, Ruth Chatterton, Jane Cowl and Gracie Fields are scheduled, few Hollywood headliners will have their usual summer fling at legit. Hollywood, going full blast, can't spare them.

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