Word: theater
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Journey. Perhaps the playhouse is so fine because it is a gift of love. It was built for a person as well as a purpose. It is Houston's outpouring of affection for Nina Vance, 53, a perky, scrappy woman who founded the Alley and fought for regional theater before the words were invented...
...choice of a first play, Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, to launch the new theater was symbolically correct. Houston is the nation's space center, and on opening night 30 of the U.S.'s 52 astronauts were present. They journey among the stars that Galileo peered at through his heretical telescope...
Unfortunately, Miss Vance's direction of the play does not soar into orbit. Perhaps the shift in sheer playing space from the postage-stamp stage of the old Alley Theater was intimidating. A risky lark tends to become a sobersided responsibility when culture receives the imprimatur of opulence. In this production, everything that was raging and revolutionary in Brecht has been quietly domesticated. The central confrontation of the play, the direct clash between the authority of divine revelation and the authority of scientific observation, is muted...
...iconoclastic author lasted eleven years before ending in divorce because, as she wrote in her memoir, Part of a Long Story, O'Neill wanted a "wife, mistress, mother and valet." Their life was like a battle scene played in a refrigerator: she cared little for the theater and enjoyed parties; he was a recluse whose only outlets were quiet drinking and dramatic writing...
Censorship is so repugnant to most moviemakers they would rather have Mondo Freudo shown in a kindergarten than let a censor bowdlerize Ulysses. On the other hand, many parents would sooner burn a theater than let their children watch the crudity visible in all too many "adult films...