A Letter from the Elmwood Community Playhouse Board of Directors

“What should have shaken me to my core with disbelief, did not.” In these words from her public statement following the Club Q murders in Colorado Springs, Brooke Malloy, Executive Director of  the Phyllis B. Frank Pride Center of Rockland County, conveyed the numbing despair induced by increasingly common hate crimes. She continued with an indictment of those whose actions and words normalize violence, particularly violence against LGBTQ+ individuals. She called on elected officials to stop feigning innocence when their violent, hateful rhetoric incites violent, hateful actions.  She stood up and she spoke out.

We cannot destroy hatred, but we can be a community that has no room for it.

The performing arts have a long history of partnership and advocacy with the LGBTQ+ community, and we in the theater community take that commitment seriously.

The members of the Board of Directors of Elmwood Community Playhouse join our voices with Brooke Malloy and the Rockland Pride Center.  We reject incendiary rhetoric and the violence it causes. We applaud the Pride Center’s mission of investing in local solutions to bring about national change.  We stand in solidarity with them as they continue their vital work supporting and defending Queer and Trans Youth.  And we share the sentiment expressed by Brooke at the Bayard Rustin Way dedication ceremony at the Pride Center in June, 2022: “If we are not good for all people, we do not exist here.”

Sincerely,

The Elmwood Community Playhouse Board of Directors

Lisa Spielman, President
Alison Costello, Vice-president
Ed Lamprich, Treasurer
Carol Napier, Secretary
Steve Bermack, Board Member
James Lugo, Board Member
Claudia Stefany, Board Member
Margaret Young, Board Member