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Article: A comfortable 25 years with an 800-pound gorilla: KenCen milieu: From the artsy to the commercial.(Arts)(In Search Of A National Theater)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- September 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How do you summarize 25 years of theater at the Kennedy Center? If the biggest hit at America's national cultural center is the audience-participation murder-mystery farce "Shear Madness," a lots-o'-yocks tourist trap that has held the Theater Lab hostage for nine extremely profitable years now, something's wrong, right? Try picturing "Shear Madness" in Britain's Royal National Theater, or even in New York's Lincoln Center.
Yet a national cultural center - for that is what the Kennedy Center has been called since its inception - that annually awards more than a quarter of a million dollars in grants to support full productions of new works, as the Kennedy ...