About Leapfrog Press

The New York Times
July 1, 2005

Scene Shifts on Cape Cod

by Joshua Kurlantzick

FROM the outside, the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater looks more like a meeting place for Cape Cod lobstermen than an institution applauded by theater critics. On summer evenings, sailors dock at the adjacent town pier and line up at Mac's Seafood, which serves fried clams and onion rings so large it's hard to believe they came from an actual vegetable. Inside the tiny theater, which seats fewer than a hundred and smells vaguely like sea air, actors can only enter from stage right because the women's room is so close to stage left that they would essentially have to enter from the bathroom.

Yet the theater has gained a reputation for productions far more sophisticated than typical summer stock - it has offered New England premieres of works by Sam Shepard and Eve Ensler and has won the New England version of a Tony award, an Elliot Norton, for its role in fostering serious theater on the cape. Earlier this year, Wellfleet Harbor presented the debut of a caustic political farce by Robert Reich, the Clinton administration's labor secretary, about an argumentative right-wing television anchor who runs for president against a Hillary Rodham Clinton look-alike who turns out to be a hermaphrodite. In Mr. Reich's world, the hermaphrodite wins by appealing to both male and female voters.

It's the kind of thing summer regulars used to drive to the far end of the cape to see - to Provincetown , the playground of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Norman Mailer that has long been considered the hub of the cape's art and theater scene. But while it still boasts a rich cultural schedule, in recent years other small towns on the Outer Cape (the stretch from Eastham to Provincetown ) have increasingly been offering theater, art, literary events and food to rival those found in Provincetown . "The arts in general here have really blossomed, with more and more programming and not just paintings of landscapes," said Jeff Zinn, Wellfleet Harbor 's producing artistic director.

Wellfleet and Truro have strong arts traditions of their own. For more than a century, writers and painters have been drawn to their stark seascapes, dunes, quaint clapboard cottages and lonely winters. Edward Hopper painted near Truro , and Edmund Wilson held court in Wellfleet. But these towns have also benefited from some of Provincetown 's modern problems. Skyrocketing real estate prices, dense summer crowds and traffic - locals talk about refusing to drive anywhere for fear of losing their parking spaces - can make solitude, low-rent artists' studios and funky writers' hovels as tough to find as local shellfish during a red tide.

"People who want peace and quiet increasingly want to move to Wellfleet," said Elaine McIlroy, director of the Wellfleet Public Library. Ira Wood, a book publisher and longtime resident of the Outer Cape , agreed, pointing to how Provincetown has changed. "It feels richer and more gentrified," he said. "It's not like the same funky old town it used to be."

So in addition to Wellfleet Harbor, there is the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, where the actor Guy Strauss produces plays, poetry readings, Shakespeare classes for children and other events. This year Payomet gained the rights to "A Number," a new play by Caryl Churchill. Payomet will present the play's New England premiere later this month, highlighting the theater's emergence as a serious cultural competitor.

The gallery and literary scenes in Wellfleet and Truro are also flourishing. Lee Ann Fanning, an owner of the Jacob Fanning Gallery in Wellfleet, said that from a handful of galleries in town in the early 1980's, "all of a sudden a gallery was opening every year." Today, Wellfleet has some 20 galleries, and on several summer Saturdays there are organized gallery receptions across town. On a recent weekend, Jacob Fanning and nearby Cove Gallery were crowded, and the patrons included teenagers dressed as Paris Hilton clones who seemed intimately familiar with the work of John Grillo, an Abstract Expressionist little known outside art circles.

Some Wellfleet residents are trying to ensure this spirit survives. Above the Harmon Studio Gallery, which opened in 2000 in a former leather factory on Commercial Street , Mac Hay and Traci Harmon Hay, two of the owners of the building, have set aside studio space for artists, with rents of $300 to $900 a month. "There's really a housing crunch, and it can push out artists and writers," Mr. Hay said. His wife knows the feeling. Before she became more successful, Ms. Harmon Hay painted Outer Cape houses floating dreamlike above the ground, symbolizing housing prices beyond the grasp of poor artists.

Just up Route 6, the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, a school for visual arts and writing, has steadily expanded its offerings and the prominence of its artists in residence. This summer, Castle Hill is offering more than 100 workshops with artists like the Latin American ceramics specialist Washington Ledesma. "In the past, it was Provincetown , and then there was everything else," said Cherie Mittenthal, executive director of Castle Hill. "Now people are looking farther down the cape for arts."

And while writers and critics have long lived in Wellfleet and Truro , in recent years the local literary community has become more accessible to the public.

Mr. Wood's Leapfrog Press, which publishes Marge Piercy, Martín Espada and Theodore Roszak as well as an eclectic mix of poets, short story writers and novelists, regularly brings authors to town. And Wellfleet's First Congregational Church, United Methodist Church and library have lately become venues for talks and writing courses by some of America 's most high-powered authors, including the best-selling theory-of-everything science writer Jared Diamond.

The downside: visiting writers who could once count on well-attended readings now "won't necessarily draw a crowd because there are so many events vying for people's attention," Ms. McIlroy, the library director, said.

Even Wellfleet's police pack laptops and book proposals. Leapfrog has published "Rookie Cop," a memoir by the police chief, Richard Rosenthal, a former New York City police officer who once infiltrated the Jewish Defense League.

THE area's newly sophisticated crowd also demands more than batter-dipped fried clams. On a late spring evening, stylishly dressed young couples lounged at pillowy booths and picked at small dishes of falafel with spicy salsa and Thai-style mussels at Abba, a restaurant in nearby Orleans that mixes Asian and Mediterranean influences. As the evening wore on, waiters uncorked bottle after bottle of wine from the giant and varied house list, as new groups arrived late into the night.

Abba's cuisine reflects the heritage of the Israeli co-owner and chef, Erez Pinhas, and his Thai-born cook, Pry Grasint, who previously cooked together in Tel Aviv. Working in the steamy basement kitchen, where they yell over a flaming wok in an odd patois of Hebrew slang, accented English and basic Thai, they have created dishes, like rack of lamb marinated in turmeric and lemongrass, which now draw diners from Provincetown, the rest of Massachusetts and even Connecticut.

In Wellfleet, pizza joints and "Continental" establishments that drowned food in butter have been replaced by the likes of the Wicked Oyster, an innovative and understated take on seafood and breakfast staples with a long bar, just off Route 6. At Winslow's Tavern, in the heart of Wellfleet's small town center, the new owners have remade a fading, overpriced restaurant into a classy modern bistro.

"There's a new ownership of restaurants on the Outer Cape ," Mr. Pinhas said. "People coming in from outside the cape are bringing in a contemporary look, more fusion food - and we're getting attention, so everyone is moving in this direction."

Even seafood shacks like Mac's have gotten into the act. On a recent weekend afternoon, while children sitting at outdoor tables stuffed down fried shrimp, the sushi bar was piled high with raw fish, and the sushi chefs were turning out unagi rolls and sushi-grade tuna with wasabi.

All the changes have the cultural institutions in Wellfleet and Truro making plans. Wellfleet Harbor plans to break ground this year on a new theater that will more than double its seating capacity and let it produce plays year round. Mr. Strauss of Payomet is hoping to move into a revamped structure on the shore in Truro .

And though most people still come to this stretch of the cape for the beaches at the Cape Cod National Seashore, the bike trails, and the small freshwater ponds, on rainy summer days Wellfleet galleries are overflowing.

"It's become the thing to do, the galleries," Ms. Fanning said. "We used to have people come in with swatches of colors of their walls, wallpaper - to match paintings to the colors." She smiled broadly. "That doesn't happen anymore."