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was not attractive to you?

No I don't think so. Well, no because, you know, what it is is supposed to do a fair amount of experimental theatre. It's not putting on “A Chorus Line”. And that's why its always going to run at fifty--if you are totally successful you get fifty percent of your money out of tickets. If you're not totally successful it's less. In a sense, we have been totally successful. We are getting our fifty percent. It's on the other side that we have not been successful.

What is the, I mean, now for--the Beaumont is-

If you want a prescription for what the Beaumont must do, that's sort of hopeless because the board has, inevitably, got to be a compromise, as all these non-profits are. Namely you got to do enough things, enough plays that will attract audiences and turn them into subscribers preferably. And at the same time you've got to do enough experimental theatre so as to be guaranteed to have some real failures. Because the word experiment means that you will have failures.

This theater has been in existence since 1958 as you well know, and through a succession of artistic directors, producers, including people like Elia Kazan, Jules Irving, Papp, you name it. There was a time when there were five of them together, including Woody Allen, you know, there have different attempts to define this theatre, would