In theater, evolving answers but same questions half-century on

Datebook: As 1969 opened, you could catch Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” at the Curran, then Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” at Berkeley Rep. San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Paine Knickerbocker was predicting that “the future of American theater seems to lie with A.C.T. and other resident companies,” a prediction borne out, 50 years later, by the huge institutions that A.C.T., Berkeley Rep and TheatreWorks have become.