Acoustics and Being Heard

After the off-Broadway run, Uta toured with Mrs. Klein. San Francisco was an early stop on the tour.

The Geary theatre was totally renovated — no restored — after the earthquake. This is its reopening. I got goose flesh of pleasure, and memories of my youth in the theatre gushed over me. We started a tech. I asked Billy [Carden, the director to turn off the speakers because the sound was so bright.

They were not on! All my fears about playing a large house vanished. I felt at home, home to play. I realized that the Lucille Lortel had given me a complex. If I couldn’t be heard there for 300 seats, what would I do in “barns” of over a 1000? I didn’t know that the Lortel is a “dead” house. Anyway, I felt joyous, opening up, reaching up and out with my voice, body and soul.