A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

THE lively arts yield multiple blessings: fun to watch, fun to read about -- and to write about. This week's issue offers an unusually full stage. Our cover subject is Woody Allen, the one-man comedy conglomerate. The Theater section takes a long look at Producer Joseph Papp, who practices a kind of populist theater. In Dance we review the ballet festival that celebrates Igor Stravinsky's music.

For Associate Editor Stefan Kanfer, doing a story on Comedian-Writer-Actor-Director Woody Allen was a bit like going home. Kanfer, like Allen, once wrote gags for nightclub and TV personalities. He also had a short run as an off-Broadway playwright before joining TIME in 1966.

Thus qualified to appreciate comedic craftsmanship, Kanfer saw Allen's recent shows and movies, pored over a collection of gags and scripts, then interviewed him. Part of the Allen magic, Kanfer learned, grows out of his obsession with the improbable. "His mind takes very big leaps. There is an old movie with Laurel and Hardy carrying a piano across a tiny, swaying bridge. Funny, but still fairly logical. Then a gorilla appears at the other side of the bridge. In Allen's humor, there is always a gorilla at the end of his bridge."

Joe Papp creates his own brand of surprises, which Associate Editor Gerald Clarke describes in his article. Papp has made subsidized theater an innovative force in artistic terms, in part by discovering a number of new playwrights who otherwise would have no forum for their plays. The man who first produced Hair back in 1967 and who now has seven plays running simultaneously in New York City, Clarke believes, is more than a talented promoter. "He is that rare creature, the good editor, who brings out what the writer wants to say." Papp also has much to say about himself, the state of the theater and his future plans.

For Music-Dance Critic William Bender and Reporter-Researcher Rosemarie Tauris Zadikov, covering the weeklong Stravinsky Festival at New York's Lincoln Center was an experience of total immersion. The event, a Woodstock in black tie for devotees of ballet, proved almost as demanding on audiences as performers. In all, 31 ballets were presented in seven days, and 21 of them were new works. While Bender kept his critic's eye on the stage, Rosemarie interviewed Choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins for an article accompanying the review. "The festival went at an allegro pace," said Bender when the 31st and final curtain had fallen. "After this week our own steps have begun to seem choreographed."

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