As a Maine playwright, having read with professional interest the feature on Ogunquit Playhouse in the Oct. 20 Sunday Telegram, I was buoyed and encouraged by the quote from artistic director Brad Kenney: “How can we help writers or artists who are new or have a new story? How can we help them move their art along?”

My answer to Mr. Kenney’s rhetorical question is simply this: Courteous acknowledgements – even a “Thanks but no thanks” or “Your project does not meet our needs at this time” – go a long way, if nothing else, to validate a playwright who, over the past 12 years, without an agent to do it for him, has sent several artistic query letters to Ogunquit Playhouse. None were acknowledged.

While the unsolicited submission of full-length scripts is the theater industry’s anathema, an in-good-faith artistic query letter is, I think, worthy of a polite response. Writers are a theater’s bread and butter. If that’s how Ogunquit Playhouse treats its friends, how does it treat its enemies?

Albert Black
Ogunquit