Artists strategically withheld productions to protect simultaneous premieres

Evidence

However The Baptism might have impressed Michael Smith, Jones was not pleased with the production. Charba remembers him being continually angry; things with Grant, who had her own history of interracial liaisons, were especially tense. Jones did not attend any of the performances and, much to Mead’s frustration, refused to allow the play to move to a “real” off-Broadway theater, presumably because it might distract from Dutchman, which opened one day later and some blocks west at the venerable Cherry Lane (a Commerce Street venue consecrated to theater forty years before by Edna St. Vincent Millay and friends). — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 614

Categorization

• XREF: Shows premiere competition within the same scene — two Jones plays opening one day apart blocks apart — illustrating the density of output.