"We had just made arrangements to take a space, were about to sign a lease, and were there cleaning up, when an Inspector appeared as if on cue, and gave us a list of what we would have to do to get permission to open. It was the last straw. Alan decided to try an outflanking maneuver.

There are laws on the books in New York that exist to cover "neighborhood clubs:" those usually ethnic, sometimes shady, storefronts with "Sons of Romania" or some such painted on the curtained window. These laws governing private clubs allowed members to hold all kinds of events for themselves and their families, without having to obey the stringent rules governing theatres and other "public" meeting places. The salient points were: (1) that you had to have a book with the members' names in it; (2) that the members be issued some kind of identification; and (3) that they pay dues of some kind. Becoming a member and paying dues could not take place at the club (the space where the events occurred).

We promptly became the American Arts Project. Membership cost a dollar a year, and entitled you to go to all programs free. As a club we couldn't charge members for events, but we could take donations. We printed a couple of thousand little green membership cards, and set out to publicize the AAP and find it a home.

This time our hands weren't tied by the rules and regulations governing theatres, and we quickly rented a loft space in the Village, on Bleecker Street, right over Gerde's Folk City. It was just a big, bare room, which Alan and George Herms (who had joined us) found most exciting. A large number of extra-thick four-by-eight plywood sheets outfitted with pipe fittings on their undersides, and a great number of pipes cut to various lengths and threaded to the fittings gave us a flexible and workable stage. We could put the plywood together at one height, or raise parts of the "stage" to different heights; have an island in the middle of the audience, stage all around teh edges of the room, whatever suited the piece we were doing.

Of necessity the stage lights were on poles, and there were fewer of them than in our "real" theatres, though some dramatic effects could be achieved. Given the vagaries of staging and stage managing, it seemed more sensible with this arrangement to do just one play at a time. We made up for the shortness of the programs, though: the productions were the most elaborate and beautiful we would ever come up with, and we added an "opener" to each show.

American Arts Project went on for two months, and we did one play each month. [...] It was very interesting to me that American Arts Project, where we never charged admission if you had your one-dollar-a-year membership card, was the only theatre we ever ran that broke even." -- Diane di Prima. Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. New York: Viking, 2001.