THE DRAMA DESK, the association of critics, writers, editors and publishers covering the New York theater, had a forum "Everything Goes! 50 Years of Social Change on the American Stage" to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the organization at Tony's DiNapoli on January 17th ,a blustery Monday evening.

In attendance was a star-studded audience including George S. Irving, recently in "She Loves Me" at the Papermill Playhouse, Jack Lee, who just closed after an extended run in "Souvenir" Off-Broadway, Maureen McGovern, soon to open in "Little Women," and Marilyn Sokol.

The panel consisted of producer Liz McCann, playwright Edward Albee, producer Martin Richards and Richard Thomas, currently on Broadway in "Democracy." The moderators were Charles Wright, Drama Desk 2^nd Vice President and Treasurer and Drama Desk board member Ellis Nassour.

The theme, introduced by Drama Desk President William Wolf, was the "Social Change in America the Past 50 Years" as reflected in the theater over the half century the organization has been awarding outstanding accomplishment. Sadly, however, from playwright, actor and producers, the overridingly important change observed has been the ballooning cost of staging and attending a play.

Over these five decades, Martin Richards told the audience, the once imposing word "producer" has lost much of its dignity. "In today's theater," he said, "its all about raising money."

Liz McCann, after saying that the theater, whatever its problems, is "almost pristine compared to what appears on TV," agreed heartily with Richards: "There are a lot more producers in some Broadway plays today than there are actors. I counted ten plays that opened this season in which there were a total of 64 producers."

It's well known that he who was traditionally an anonymous backer who put up a few thousand now insists on Producer billing, and the veteran producer put her own metaphorical slant on it. "The way it works out today," she concluded caustically, "Everybody sitting in First Class gets to drive the plane." Marty Richards added that each has his own opinion and wants give notes to the director/actors.

She remembered the day when she paid 50 cents to sit in the rear balcony to see "The Glass Menagerie." The price of a rear balcony seat for the upcoming revival, she said, will be $71.50.

Edward Albee happily recalled the days 50 years ago when he lived in Greenwich Village and was paying from $2 go $4 to attend plays in the Village's little side street theaters. The original production of his masterpiece, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" he said, cost $42,000, whereas the upcoming revival is budgeted at $2 million. He noted wryly that everything had gone up but the playwright's royalty, which was always 10% of the gross. Now, he said, it's 5%.

Another sad fact of the change over the decades, McCann said, is that "Young playwrights today are getting a raw deal: they are not allowed to fail." As, she might have added, a Joe Papp would have allowed them to do as he nurtured new talent at the Public Theater.

Richard Thomas can't go back 50 years, but he reached back over 40-plus to his days as a child star as he spoke of the eccentricity of some directors in casting. At the age of seven in the 1962-63 season he went to an audition for Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude" at the Actors' Studio, and legendary Panamanian-born José Quintero ( the primary interpreter of O'Neill) asked him: "What do you want to do more than anything in your life?" Thomas, fervently: "To act!" And his audition was over without reading a line when, as the actor played him, Quintero cried: "Dat's it! You got da part!" to a great laugh from the audience. (Our thanks to critic Phil Dorian for the details of this anecdote. An actor at the time, he was in the Actors' Studio production of "Marathon ' 33" the following season.)

Lucy Komisar, a Drama Desk member who moderated a panel on Politic in Theater earlier this season, asked Richard Thomas a question about the somewhat controversial portrayal of the German chancellor Willy Brandt in the play "Democracy," ( TheaterScene published a letter from an old colleague of hers, Dr. Pierre Schori, former Swedish Ambassador to the UN, and colleague of Brandt, who said the man he knew was quite different from the one played on Broadway. Thomas, who neither wrote the play nor played Brandt onstage, defended the playwright, Michael Frayn, for his research and portrayal of Brandt). Other questions addressed the role of education in the new generation of potential theatergoers so necessary for the survival of theater. Liz McCann cited a recent inner city audience of high school kids who were to her "absolute stupefaction" mesmerized by "Gem of the Ocean", suggesting that if the material is good and accessible they will become involved.