Sign of the Times

The dead sign on the out-of-order but still-lit Bank of America ATM in the photograph was my creation (The Mail, Feb. 1). I got fed up with the refusal of BoA to act after calling HQ in Charlotte and calling/visiting 201 N. Charles St. nearby!

The months-long broken ATM, caught by your roving camera this past week, suddenly started working! On Friday it was still kaput, and would be yet but for the Big Bank deciding enough was enough.

One picture is worth more than a half dozen complaints to headquarters and a nearby branch.

And I know Vermin Supreme (“Vermin Supremacy,” Feature, Feb. 1). He was in Manchester, N.H., to attend GOP parties Jan. 10, and I met him, boot-on-head, on Elm Street. I found he’d run against [Kurt] Schmoke for mayor (I ran against Sheila [Dixon] in ’07), so we are related. He is still from outer space, and if Newt colonizes the moon, he oughta go there!

Mike Schaefer

Baltimore

Community Theater Is for the Community

Sorry the cast picture of Fells Point Corner Theatre’s production of The Iceman Cometh didn’t include the three wonderful women also in the cast (Stage, Feb. 1). Wow—what a job everyone involved in the show did!

Baltimore’s local community theater is a treasure, yet so often I’m incredulous the houses aren’t sold out every night—which, sad to say, they’re not. It’s also surprising with so many theater fans in the city, along with all of Baltimore’s performing-arts students, the audiences are usually older and predominantly middle-class. There needs to be more outreach into the younger community and into our more diverse populations. The prices for seats are low, and the venues usually are located downtown.

The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill is classic theater, yet so rarely performed. When I saw it on the FPCT 2012 schedule, I reserved a ticket immediately, and was able to get one for opening night too. There are rare opportunities to enjoy such rare works, and these chances should not go unheeded. I’ve been lucky over the years to see community theater productions of A Winter’s Tale, The Three Sisters, Speed-the-Plow, Riders to the Sea, and Death of a Salesman, to name just a few.

I fail to understand why the city’s major media ignore these marvelous productions in favor of every over-hyped rock band that comes to town. It might be of interest also to know that the performers and folks working behind the scenes are not paid. But if you scrutinize the program biographies, they’re professional in every way, except for a paycheck.

I just wish the local theaters would work harder to get the word out about what they’re doing. Even though I live within walking distance of many community venues, so many people in my neighborhood don’t know of their existence. Even if the mainstream media is reluctant to promote community theater, the theaters themselves need to work harder by enlisting community groups to spread the word and by hanging fliers on local bulletin boards.

Again, The Iceman Cometh was an incredible theatrical experience. And I’m looking forward to the free discussion of the play following the final Feb. 12 performance.

Rosalind Heid

Baltimore

Correction: Last week’s feature on Vermin Supreme misreported two pieces of information. The cross-country march Supreme went on in 1986 was the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, not the Florida Pilgrimage for Peace in Space. Also, according Supreme, a City Paper quip from his early days as a club promoter in Baltimore calling him “unoriginal and obnoxious” was not written by late CP staffer Pam Purdy. “If it’s on tape, i misspoke,” he says via e-mail. “Me and Pam got along swimmingly. The zinger, if i recall was written w/o a byline.” City Paper regrets the errors.