It was with profound befuddlement that news was received in this office, last week, that John Drew Theater at Guild Hall had been renamed.
We were still feeling warm-fuzzies over the preservation of the theater’s charming 1931 circus-tent interior — a victory for preservationists and sentimentalists, as well as a welcome signal that Guild Hall’s board had taken its audience’s wishes to heart — as we were flipping through the pages of the beautifully produced 2024 Season Program Guide . . . when, on page nine, was the headline: “Announcing the New Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater.”
“Are we being punked?” we thought for a split second. “Is this April Fool’s?”
It’s hard to overestimate the astonishment at this unceremonious surprise. Calls and emails began to arrive from readers, similarly confused, similarly downcast.
The symbolism, callers said, was just too much.
The contretemps over the John Drew Theater and its renovation — and, now, depressingly, its naming — was always about community and “ownership.” To many of us who grew up in East Hampton, the John Drew Theater was “owned” by the public, in spirit. It belonged to us as a public commons, and decisions about its function and future were made in consultation with the community.
It was founded by more than 100 townspeople — the proverbial butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker, as well as a clutch of essential summer-colony folk — at a public meeting in November 1931. Many who grew up here have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in its founding and early funding. The “building is not intended as a luxury place for the use of summer residents; it is especially for the use and pleasure of the permanent residents who will use it 75 percent of the time,” the community, gripped with Depression-era idealism and egalitarianism, declared.
The Morgans are being honored for a very generous donation toward the theater’s renovation, and they deserve kudos and thank-yous for that generosity. Ms. Morgan is on Guild Hall’s board of trustees, and they were photographed in attendance at Guild Hall’s annual gala in 2021, but beyond these facts, the couple isn’t terribly well known in the fabric of our community.
The John Drew for whom the theater was named was famous around the English-speaking world as an actor, but around East Hampton he was a beloved neighborhood figure, on chit-chatting terms with men, women, children, and dogs. He walked from his south of the highway house upstreet, daily, stopping to linger on the front step with shopkeepers at the hardware store or the post office. He gave a speech every Fourth of July. He judged contests at the Ladies Village Improvement Society fair. He was a local hero.
That no advance warning was given of this renaming, and there were no public ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the new Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater, suggests that the board understood how East Hampton would feel. Judging by the calls and emails, how we feel is dejected. R.I.P., John Drew.