Historical/Biographical Note

The Tamiment Playhouse was a resident summer theater that operated between 1921 and 1960 at Camp Tamiment, an adult summer camp in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Camp Tamiment was an educational and recreational summer resort (originally) for socialists and their families near Bushkill, Pa., from 1921 until its sale in 1965 to commercial interests. The TPH became a creative outlet for theater, dance, film, and television of the mid-twentieth century. Actors such as Danny Kaye, Bea Arthur, Imogene Coca, and Carol Burnett, directors Max Liebman, Herb Ross, and Joe Layton, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and writers Woody Allen and Neil Simon are some of the entertainment figures nurtured at Camp Tamiment. Much of the original material performed at Tamiment found its way to the professional stage, Broadway, and television, and much of it reflects the predominantly Jewish cultural and politically liberal orientation of the camp and its residents. See also LoMonaco, Martha Schmoyer, Every week, a Broadway revue : the Tamiment Playhouse, 1921-1960(NYU Press, 1992).