Have you been to EST? It's FAR. Especially in the winter when the wind from New Jersey cuts right through you. You see that seal over there? it died trying to get to EST. Why's EST so FAR? Maybe because...
1) EST was on 52nd and Broadway until the great Trail of Tears, when small theater companies were forced off their prime central real estate and relocated to the desolate west side highway.
2) In the 1970s, the EST capital committee was like "Fuck this downtown movement. That's going nowhere. Let's build EST in midtown - on 52nd and 11th - where ALL the other theaters are going."
3) EST founder Curt Dempster built EST as a seaside summer stock company right on the waterfront. Unfortunately, the city of New York expanded the girth of the Manhattan landmass with landfill, rendering the theater landlocked yet still isolated from all civilization.
4) The Sloan Foundation commissions new works that "encourage plays about science and technology as far away from central Manhattan as physically possible."
5) EST was once part of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, until plate tectonics unearthed it from its bed at the base of the Hudson.
6) Graeme Gillis insisted it go there. INSISTED.
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