The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams premiered at Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Executive Artistic Director, New York City, April 15 – May 2, 2010 with the following cast:
Historical Background of the Play
By Barbara Kahn
In December of 1943, of the 849 Jews on a train from France to Auschwitz in Poland, only 6 survived. Number 847, Eve Zloczower, was not among them. What put Eve in harm’s way was an incident seventeen years earlier in Greenwich Village, New York City. The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams recounts the true story of an extraordinary woman who was a victim of homophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria that ultimately led to her death at the hands of the Nazis.
Under the name Eve Adams, Eve was proprietor of Eve’s Hangout at 129 Macdougal Street, a tearoom where local poets, musicians and actors congregated to meet and share their work in salon evenings. At the same time, the nearby Provincetown Playhouse was presenting groundbreaking theater. Because Eve welcomed lesbians to her tearoom, it became a notorious stop on guided tours. This haven of artistic and sexual freedom was soon threatened by a crackdown initiated by religious and governmental authorities. The treachery of an undercover policewoman led to the raid that closed the tearoom and the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of Eve Adams. This conflict between progressive and reactionary forces provides the dramatic tension in the play as the characters attempt to live and love free from discrimination. The play conveys not only a long forgotten moment in history but sheds light on current threats by holding a mirror to the past.
Eve Adams was more than a name on a page of Holocaust victims. In exile in Europe, she was a promoter and supporter of Henry Miller, James Joyce, Anais Nin and other now celebrated writers, selling their books to American and English tourists.
