A David Dodge Companion - Plays
“The Macondray Lane playhouse, easily unique among little theatres anywhere in the world, originated adventitiously in circumstances as blithe and impromptu as can well be imagined. Burkhardt, one day in 1927, decided to build a hand-ball court in the basement of his house, and solicited the help of several neighborhood friends. Someone observed that the basement had a naturally sloping floor (being on a hillside) and that with very little trouble it could be converted into a theatre. The initial project was therefor [sic] abandoned. On the moment’s impulse they constructed a playhouse in miniature, of course, but furnished with necessary theatrical equipment; a stage whose backdrop afforded a view of San Francisco Bay as seen through a window. Patrons of this house, unconventional even to the home-made benches used in lieu of chairs, gained admittance through a door so low they had to pass through it stooped”
