The plays and letters of playwright John Van Druten will be read at a May 3 event sponsored by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and held at the Great Hall at Cooper Union (7th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan). Van Druten wrote such plays as Bell Book and Candle and I Am a Camera. J. Smith-Cameron, Justin Kirk and Myra Carter will read from the latter work, as well as I've Got Sixpence and excerpts from Van Druten's unpublished diary and letters to Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams and others. Joe Masteroff, who wrote the book to the musical Cabaret, which is based on I Am a Camera, will also speak.

The forum takes place at 6:30 PM. Additional Van Druten readings will occur on June 7 at 6:30, at which Carter and Patricia Elliot will appear; and June 14 at 6:30 PM, featuring Celeste Holm, who appeared in The King and I, which Van Druten directed. For information, call (212) 642 0142.

--By Robert Simonson