Critics raved last season during C-R Productions' staging of "Cats" at Cohoes Music Hall. Now, the outfit stands on the brink of insolvency ("Money gap threatens encore," Aug. 3). What happened?
I'll tell you: We got our priorities out of whack. We have millions to pour into the University at Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (Mark Alesse addresses this eloquently in his letter "Is there a payoff to Nanotech?" July 12). We have millions more to throw at the GlobalFoundries project.
Yet, we can't come up with a few thousand to keep Cohoes alive.
The American musical theater that C-R presents in Cohoes is the quintessential American art form. It represents American popular music before rock 'n' roll. It represents our attempts to make sense of, and laugh at, our lives in the early stages of the modern 20th century. It represents our legacy to our children and allows them to know us better.
Young people love live musical theater. Children's programs at Cohoes, the Theatre Institute at Sage, Park Playhouse, Mac-Haydn Theatre, etc., are thriving, but children's programs are not enough.
It is imperative that adults step up and save local venues like Cohoes that are attempting to keep this legacy alive. We owe it to our children.
JOSEPH H. VANDERPOOL
Rensselaer