Province Lands Amphitheater
Province Lands Amphitheater. [2009, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
The Advocate of 1 June 1972 told the story of Provincetown’s Woodstock.
Text last updated on 31 December 2023 | The 700-seat Province Lands Amphitheater of 1968, a companion piece to the Visitor Center, was designed — as the center was — by Benjamin Biderman of the National Park Service’s Eastern Office of Design and Construction.
Four years after its completion, in late May 1972, the amphitheater was the setting of what can only be called Provincetown’s version of Woodstock: an open-air, multi-day music concert that was simply overwhelmed by unexpected crowds. “12,000 Hippies Swarm to Rock Festival; Area Trampled; but Police Avoid Trouble,” was the banner headline in the Advocate of 1 June 1972. The event was called the Provincetown Music and Arts Festival and it was sponsored by Lee Falk and David Blackmore, under the rubric of the Provincetown Academy of the Living Arts, or PALA.
No acts of violence were reported, but nine concertgoers were taken away in ambulances and two men — one of whom identified himself as Jesus Christ, the other as Charles Manson — were taken to Taunton State Hospital. Hand-planted beach grass was flattened, storm fences were torn down, and shingles were pried off the roof of the Race Point bathhouse for firewood. In the end, Falk said he didn’t know how much money had actually been raised to benefit Bangladesh, which had won its independence from Pakistan only months earlier after a devastating war.
(I’m indebted to Stephen Desroches, the premier chronicler of modern popular culture in Provincetown, for opening my eyes to the Provincetown Music and Arts Festival of 1972.)
¶ Republished on 31 December 2023.