NEW YORK — A group of theater community heavyweights – including Jon Robin Baitz, Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, John Guare and Terrence McNally – have signed an open letter defending a playwright whose play parodying 1970's sitcoms has been accused of copyright infringement by lawyers representing the TV show "Three's Company."

The collection of playwrights, theater professionals and performers are backing David Adjmi, whose play "3-C" just ended its run at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre.

The play is about two girls – one a tomboy, the other a sexy ditz – and a guy who spontaneously become roommates in a rundown Santa Monica apartment after a wild party. They clash with a dislikable landlord who makes offensive, homophobic jokes. The playwright is exploring the idea of a culture avoiding hard issues and problems by retreating into sex and drugs

The law firm Kenyon & Kenyon, which represents DLT Entertainment, the owners of the long defunct TV sitcom "Three's Company," sent Adjmi a letter demanding that he cease further performances of the play anywhere. The lawyers claim that "3-C" is damaging to a proposed stage version of "Three's Company."

In their defense of Adjmi, the theater professionals argue that his play is a "clearly and patently and unremittingly parody" and accused the lawyers of "bullying."

"Specious and spurious legal bullying of artists should be vigorously opposed, and that opposition must begin first and foremost with all of us in the New York Theatre community," the letter says.

Among those signing it are the writers Stephen Adley Guirgis, Kenneth Lonergan and Bruce Norris, directors and actors such as Martha Plimpton and Joe Mantello, and theater leaders such as the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's Terry Kinney and Lincoln Center Theatre's Andre Bishop.

Kenyon & Kenyon did not return calls or an email made after business hours Wednesday.

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Online:

The letter: http://www.theawl.com/2012/07/a-letter-from-the-theater-community-regarding-david-adjmis-3-c

CLICK through for a slideshow of great playwright/modern TV mashups:
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  • Oscar Wilde/Mad Men

    The glamour, the banter, the covert homosexuality -- there's a lot in common between AMC's prettiest show and the works of Oscar Wilde, a playwright who liked pretty things. Wilde was famously an advocate of aestheticism, inscribing his seminal novel "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" with the statement: "All art is quite useless," <a href="http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-1/duggan/" target="_hplink">a dramatic way of saying</a> that what's compelling to look at needn't serve any useful purpose. If that isn't a defense of the advertising industry, we don't know what is. Then there's the overt link: Don Draper fled his hometown of Bunbury for a new life, a <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/feb/24/mad-men-account/?pagination=false" target="_hplink">nod to the code word</a> Wilde's male leads coin in "The Important Of Being Earnest" to reference their duplicity.

  • Wendy Wasserstein/Girls

    Read the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/theater/31wasserstein.html?_r=2" target="_hplink"><em>New York Times</em> obituary for Wendy Wasserstein</a> -- a playwright born to wealthy parents in Brooklyn -- and just try not to think of that other child of privilege from the Big Apple, Lena Dunham. From the article's headline ("Her Plays Spoke To A Generation") to the description of Wasserstein's heroines ("intelligent and successful but also riddled with self-doubt"), it all sounds like one of those <a href="http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/girls-lena-dunham-2012-4/" target="_hplink">early bright-eyed "Girls" paeans</a>. Ok, Dunham's "Girls" persona isn't exactly successful yet, but considering how <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/05/07/152183865/lena-dunham-addresses-criticism-aimed-at-girls" target="_hplink">close to home the show's sourcing starts</a> we're pretty sure it'll happen for Hannah soon.

  • Mary Chase/Wilfred

    Mary Chase wrote "Harvey," a Pultizer-winning play (turned 1950 Jimmy Stewart film) about an eccentric man whose best friend is a six foot tall imaginary bunny. In FX's "Wilfred," Elijah Wood plays a depressive who can't shake the vision that his neighbor's dog is an Australian dude in a dog suit. This playwright/TV connection may be only fur-deep, but you can't deny it.

  • Tom Stoppard/Arrested Development

    A self-described "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/stoppard_transcript.shtml" target="_hplink">language nerd</a>," Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard is known for his dense and clever thought experiments, exemplified in his career-making recast of two minor "Hamlet" characters as leads in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." We'd have no trouble imagining him penning the fast-paced wordplay of "Arrested Development," a show that revels in knotty, knotty plots (absurdist Charlize Theron era strikes us as just right).

  • Shakespeare/Modern Family

    We know it's inviting criticism to pair Shakespeare with any modern creation, except maybe the only show people get really poetic about, "The Wire." But hear us out: Shakespeare was one of the most popular entertainers of his time. "Modern Family" sets the bar for widely appealing fare these days, and while it's got nothing on a Shakespearean tragedy, its multi-predicament-into-happy-ending formula makes it ABC's half-hour weekly update of "A Comedy Of Errors."

  • Tennessee Williams/Six Feet Under

    Tennessee Williams loved his dysfunctional families -- take the household in "The Glass Menagerie," where the places of honor are reserved for an absentee father and a collection of glass figurines. Meanwhile, HBO's long-running series "Six Feet Under" is nothing if not proof that family dysfunction makes for great TV. We have no doubt Williams' Southern gothic tastes would gel with the show's funeral home backdrop, although he might move the Fishers down a few states.