Sigh,…its really a shame because the first thing that usually goes when financial times get tough involve the Arts. The end for this place has probably been coming for a while. I hope they can save it. Its a shame that the Bucks County Playhouse as a venue might be lost and become just another anachronistic memory like so many other institutions of my youth; service stations, drive in movies, S & H Green Stamps, luncheon counters, Woolworth’s five and dime stores,old timey movie theaters. Some of these things CAN be restored/retooled and can still maintain a valuable place in our culture. As a working cinema, the County Theater in Doylestown has been enjoying a new lease on life for years. I saw my first movie here in 1965 and they continue to show first run films.

Maybe they need to re-invent the Playhouse. A casino maybe? A brothel? Would anything in this economy work?

Look at what they did to the Methodist Church of my youth in the center of downtown New Hope. Whether you care for the church or not is not the issue. I am pissed because they turned a big hunk of my youth into a ritzy restaurant that I could never afford to eat in and watch as it serves up Purina Yuppie Chow and nibbly things to the rich Manhattanite wankers 🙁

I know that years ago St John Terrell’s Music Circus in Lambertville, for example, was a viable live entertainment venue that featured nationally known acts. The Music Circus did amazingly well until hard times in the Seventies hit. It went under and sort of followed in the foot steps of the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill and became a Discotheque. We all know what happened to Disco and the music circus today is, well, …..um, condominiums. The Latin Casino is office space. I guess it is hopeless after all.

Cartwheel, …gone. Prelude,…gone. Farmland,….gone. Country Charm? Gone. Thank you Toll Brothers! Thank you Starbucks! Thank you CVS and Target! Welcome to Levittown North! There’s No Hope for New Hope without the Playhouse.

Once upon a time in in Central Bucks County,…. New Hope and the surrounding environs were a gay friendly artist’s escape. Bohemians of all stripes came out to the country and this sleepy little river town to create, relax and escape deep into their craft. The farther from civilization the better. Oscar Hammerstein had a stately home in Doylestown, less than two hours from the Great White Way. George Michener and Pearl Buck both made this part of the world their home. Abbie Hoffman the Sixties counter-culture gadfly lived in New Hope on Sugan Road. Jack Rosen lives here. Japanese artist and designer George Nakashima sold his world reknown, award winning designs out of his pagoda atop Carversville Hill. In the Sixties, New Hope was the center of a star-studded universe. The Bucks County Playhouse was a testing ground for Broadway productions, and it drew some of the biggest actors at the time! The biggest shame over all this is now there’s really NO ARTISTIC REASON to go to New Hope anymore.

If the Playhouse closes it would be as if Hershey decided to stop making chocolate. People would trek to this place, sans culture of any kind, just to be greeted by puerile crowds, over-priced food, expensive knick knack shops, inane T-shirt emporiums and Starbucks: all with the benefit of absolutely no parking! If you want that you might as well hang out on South Street!

PERFECT EXAMPLE! Everything in its place! Zipperhead! TLA! Punk Rockers! South Street used to be cool! It used to be alternative. That’s what that neighborhood was. It used to mean something. It used to be South Street. Now it’s one big mall. BABY GAP? TALBOTS? Really? Eat my punk rock asshole you duck-ridin’ mouth-breathin’ out of town fuck nut!

Maybe they can turn the Bucks County Playhouse into another mini-mall or another Olive Garden. Better still they could turn it into a marina for a fleet of those annoying duck boats. That way every place can be exactly the same as culture-less, classless, Capitalistic Cookie Cutter Crap-hole South Street. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Yeah,…I sure would go up to New Hope to see that!

If you would like to learn how to help the theater you can go here.