CMU School of Drama


Monday, September 18, 2017

In Houston, a Theater Finds Itself Offstage After Harvey

WSJ: Dean Gladden breathed a sigh of relief two years ago when a $46.5 million renovation of the Alley Theatre, the first major improvement in the Tony Award-winning theater’s five-decade history, was finally completed.

Standing in the theater’s flood-damaged, putrid-smelling basement almost two weeks after Hurricane Harvey dumped trillions of gallons of rain on the nation’s fourth largest city, Mr. Gladden was almost breathless.

2 comments:

Anabel Shuckhart said...

This articles is one of the most hard hitting ones that I have read about Hurricane Harvey so far, not only because it is about a theatre company who has had to come even closer together these past few weeks, but also because it takes a larger perspective on what the hurricane has done to so many communities in this country. In the last lines of the article, prop master Karin Vance is quoted in saying, "The rest of it--all this stuff--we can rebuild. It is just stuff". Which brings up the point: how much of our "stuff" correlates with our own identities? How much of our materialistic wealth really matters to us? In the theatre, our "stuff" is a little different than the stuff that we have in our stores, etc., because we have used it to tell stories. It is important to remember and look at how our "stuff" effects us, and how we really do have to rebuild it when we lose it.

Unknown said...

Hurricane Harvey was a huge disaster to a very large city that impacted quite a few of my friends, being from Texas, I know some people there. Unfortunately, when I think of a hurricane hitting a city, I don't think about how the damage has affected the arts. My initial instinct is to think of all the people I know there, to worry about the homes and the lives of those being hit. Hearing about the damage to this theater hurts my heart. They just finished a multi-million dollar renovation, and now that has gone down the drain. So, it was inspiring to hear that they still found a way to put on the performance and share their art with Houston. SInce the show was sold out, it is obvious that people need something to distract them from what is going on around them, and art is a great way to do that.