Nina Vance, Texas Pioneer
WALK UP THE GRAND STAIRCASE OUTSIDE the concrete castle in Houston that is the Nina Vance Alley Theatre, walk through the doors, and look to your right. There’s a portrait of the theatre’s namesake: She’s well-coiffed, a little imposing, with a mysterious smile and a gleam in her eye. She looks like Texas. Her legacy in Houston is without parallel, and so was her impact on the American theatre.
Born in Yoakum, Texas, in 1914 to Calvin Perry (C.P.) Whittington and Sue Minerva DeWitt Whittington, she was a direct descendant of two of the earliest immigrants from the Eastern states to Texas: Green DeWitt and Benjamin Beeson. Nina (pronounced “Nine-a”) would spend nearly all of her life in the Lone Star State, and she would take the pioneering spirit of her forefathers into a new realm. What began with a few classes she taught at a Jewish Community Center when she was 30 years old grew over time into one of the great regional theatres in the U.S.
The career path for smart and ambitious young women of her time was limited at best, but she found a route through the stage. A theatre lover from early on, she appeared in plays at Texas Christian University, where
