You Could Drive a Person Crazy: Chronicle of an American Theatre Company

For years, conventional wisdom has held that theatre companies have to produce well-known, flashy shows to make money and stay afloat. But one regional theatre company out in the middle of America has been proving since 1991 that conventional wisdom is wrong. Created at the vanguard of the new nonprofit musical theatre movement in the early 1990s, New Line Theatre consistently challenges its audiences, taking them on wild, intense, roller coaster rides, challenging them with complex characters and themes, daring to be aggressive, even confrontational. New Line Theatre has, once and for all, shattered the myth that audiences only like what they know, that audiences don't like to think when they come to the theatre, that people want escape. On the contrary, New Line has proven that audiences --even those in the supposedly conservative Midwest -- love to be challenged, shaken up, confronted, engaged. This volume includes a brief narrative history of the company, program information for each show in the first ten seasons, director's notes, review excerpts, and remembrances by those who were there in the early days of this pioneer alternative theatre company.