About Us
Formed in 2001 in Provincetown, in the birthplace of American theater, the Provincetown Theater is a 110-seat, year-round performing arts space located in the heart of downtown Provincetown. The Theater mounts original productions and plays centered on American voices and incubates meaningful, original theater from a diverse spectrum of playwrights.
The Theater actively engages with businesses and community organizations on the Outer Cape and regularly hosts special and educational events to bring the community together such as variety and holiday shows where locals are featured. Our physical space boasts a large parking lot, a comfortable bar/lounge area, and a solar array that powers our Theater. Visitors come from Cape Cod, and around the world, to visit Provincetown and our historic theater.
We believe that creating theater builds community.
Managing Director - Gary Garrison
From 2007-2017, Gary Garrison was the Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists, and composers headed by our nation’s most honored dramatists. Up to the spring of 2020, he was also the Director of the Dramatist Guild Institute – a premier educational institution dedicated to the continued education of dramatists throughout the country. Prior to his work at the Guild, Garrison filled the posts of Associate Chair, Artistic Director, and Master Teacher of Playwriting in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where he produced over forty-five different festivals of new work, collaborating with hundreds of playwrights, directors, and actors.
As a playwright, Garrison’s plays include The Mayworkers, The Unexpected Light On Azadeh Medusa, Too Quick to Pick, Ties That Bind, Skirting the Issue, Caught Without Candy, Game On, The Sweep, Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been commissioned by or featured at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, City Theatre of Miami, Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, The Theresa Rebeck Writers Residency (through The Lark), Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Open Door Theatre, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep.
His recent work as a guest artist or master teacher of playwriting involves such institutions as the Marfa Intensives, Convivio Writer’s Conference (Postignano, Italy), Sewanee Writer’s Conference, The Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, CityWrights of Miami, The Inkwell, Source Theatre in D.C., Baltimore Playwrights Festival, New Hampshire Playwrights Festival, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Southeast Theatre Conference, Northwest Theatre Conference, Alaska World Arts Festival, Boston Playwrights and has taught at New York University, Boston University, University of Oklahoma, The University of Texas, Hollins University, Goddard College, Texas State University, Texas Tech, University of Southern Mississippi, West Georgia College and the Dramatists Guild Institute.
He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten‑Minute Play, A More Perfect Ten, and two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men. In April of 2014, The Kennedy Center instituted the National Gary Garrison Ten-Minute Play Award given to the best ten-minute play written by a university dramatist, and in the spring of 2016, awarded him the Milan Stitt Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting in the country. In July of this year, he was featured in American Theatre magazine’s The Subtext podcast with Brian James Polk under the title, More Than Ten Minutes with Gary Garrison.
Artistic Director - David Drake
David Drake has been putting on shows since he was a kid. He's been the Artistic Director at the Provincetown Theater for seven years.
In New York City, David has directed works at Rattlestick, The Flea, Soho Playhouse, and Joe’s Pub. Collaborating with Taylor Mac, he directed and developed The Lily’s Revenge at the Sundance Theater Lab prior to staging its world premiere at HERE in New York (Obie Award). Also with Taylor, David directed the world tour of The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac.
As an actor, David got his Equity card off-Broadway, replacing Charles Busch in Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at the Provincetown Playhouse.
He appeared in the original New York casts of A Language of Their Own (Public), End of the World Party (46th Street Theater), Pretty Boy (Performing Garage), and The Boys in the Band (1996 revival at Lucille Lortel). Television: The Good Wife, NY Undercover, HBO’s Vinyl, and as a repeat offender on Law & Order. His film credits include Longtime Companion, It’s Pat, David Searching, We Pedal Uphill, Philadelphia, and opposite Alan Cumming in After Louie. Regionally, David has appeared at A.R.T., Huntington, Barrington Stage, Arena Stage, San Diego’s Old Globe, and numerous others.
David is the Obie Award-winning playwright and performer of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, in which he performed a year off-Broadway (Perry Street) before touring worldwide and then shooting it as a feature film. David has taught at New York’s Abrons Art Center, and Baltimore’s MICA, and received artist residencies in New York at The BRICLab, DTW, Clemente Soto, Dixon Place.
Board of Directors 2024
Staff
Artistic & Production Associate
Peter Toto
Marketing & Communications Associate
Eden Allegretti
Operations Associate
Robby Silva
Theater Production Assistant
Sami Parazin
House Manager
Dave Haase
Box Office Representative
Sami Williams
Bar Manager
Kat Williams
Facilities Maintenance
Linda Ohlson Graham
Land Acknowledgement
The Provincetown Theater is located on the ancestral land of the Mashpee Wampanoag (Wôpanâak), “the People of the First Light”, who have lived on Cape Cod for more than 12,000 years. Present-day Provincetown was a territory of the Nauset tribe, a branch of the Mashpee, who named this land Meeshawn.
The Provincetown Theater recognizes that this is unceded land. We are working to honor past generations of people who have been displaced from the area and to establish authentic relationships with the present-day Indigenous peoples of Cape Cod.
A map of Wampanoag territories in 1620, from Voices from Colonial America: Massachusetts, 1620-1776, National Geographic Society, 2007.
