HSAC critics need to rethink their arguments

Over the past several weeks writers to the Moorpark Acorn have been complaining about the city of Moorpark's support of the High Street Arts Center.

While the main thrust of these attacks is supposed low attendance and revenue loss, I've also seen the word "elitist" crop up more than once.

That strikes me as absurd. The HSAC is very much in the mainstream of time-tested community theater, as witnessed by Neil Simon comedies, musicals like "Bye Bye Birdie" and sentimental favorites like "On Golden Pond."

Elitist calls to mind the avant garde works of a Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco. I guess to some whatever doesn't excite the rush that comes from booing and hissing at a melodrama must be elitist.

I wonder if any of the naysayers have bothered to take in a show at the HSAC in the past year. They would find themselves rubbing shoulders with a crowd of smiling faces, a community—no longer an abstract word. No card-carrying elitists that I could see.

The carping about sinking attendance still goes on after council member Mikos explained in her guest opinion editorial in the Moorpark Acorn (June 5) that overall attendance has risen over the past three years.

Once again, those not satisfied with the direction the HSAC has taken, you are cordially invited to the next open forum of the Arts Commission. It's that chance to be heard that you stubbornly insist has been denied you. Tom Puckett Moorpark

Puckett sits on the board of the Moorpark Arts Commission.